Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Preg Checking Cows

Not an easy job, glad it's done.

You check them in the spring?

Lots of folks still palpating cows.

I have a buddy whose wife does ultrasound pregnancy testing. She stays pretty busy.

How far down can your vet find them? 30 days?

It is calving season here for most, some switch it up. We use a squeeze too.

In this country pregnancy rates are getting worse every day, this time of year.

That vet isn't covered in chit, must be the first cow through the chute! I thought rubber bibs were mandatory....


Vets here are all pretty much all ultrasound. Either the glasses or a screen. Double check opens by hand and it seems like they are always right the first time.


We tested back in early November, fattened the opens up and sold them a couple weeks ago.

We don't calve until the last of April. I tried running with the big boys back 83, and 84. Late snow storms cost 15 calves in 83, and 25 in 84.

The vets we use to use were not so good at preg testing. I recall one "open" heifer having a calf in May in the feed yard. Doing it in March seems to give us a more accurate result.

This year the better cow market was worth the wait.

Richard, some of the fancy pants guys in north east Montana will start calving heifers in mid February. Talking guys up northeast where is colder than here.

Sounds crazy but it's true.

I haven't personally seen the setups but I'm thinking it's oil money and heated sheds.

Sam, if anyone can make it work, It's none of my business when they calve. We are not set up for calving in snow, and mud season.
We can have enough bad weather in May.

We buy bulls from Kenny Angus, they use our fat cattle pictures at the fat auction as a sales pitch.

Richard, you must be doing it right if they use your stock for advertising!


We've pushed back our calving date a week or two(mid to late March). Some guys are 2-3 weeks behind us, some are a week ahead.

Talking calving outdoors now.

Hell, it's the 20th of March and we have one calf on the ground.

Good luck to all of us "cowboys" calving this year Sam!

Roger that Richard!

Sam, our vet asked us about using a vaccine for cows to help with calf scours. $5 a cow, we did not do it. Do you know anything about that?

Richard, I am the worst person to ask about vaccine(or crop spray)....


Have not heard of that.



I do know that some years we gets scours and some years we don't. You always have to treat a few...

Hell if I can narrow down the conditions to guess why.


Clean straw and more clean straw is how we kinda try to deal with 'chit' like that. Calving out in big 'dry' pastures would be nice but that's not the case.

Wheat straw Sam?

Yep.


We buy it from a couple different farmers.

Irrigated wheat, the only way to get make a big enough windrow the last couple years....

You wanna know what is kinda weird?


We have an OLD pile of straw. Talking +10 years old.


That and some brand new stuff from last fall.


I have been running the old stuff through a processor.
(major pain in the ass, taken years....)


The cows won't eat the new straw, bedding only.


They like to eat the old straw. I have seen cows leave good alfalfa for the old straw.

I never....ever put out a bale of straw unless its at least a year old.

The cattle love it. It becomes very palatable as it ages.