The 2004 sale heifers purchased with the calve-out option have all calved and are delivered to their new owners. Reports from customers who took their heifers home to calve have been uniformly good too. The weather cooperated for our due dates this year for the most part. A few pretty cold nights, but it could have been a lot worse.
Calving season means we start our version of the Sandhills Calving System. For those of you who haven't heard of this, it is a calf health management program that involves sorting the uncalved cows out after a week of calving and moving them to a new pasture. A week later, you take the still uncalved cows and move them on. This continues so that at the end of calving, you have 8 groups of pairs. Within each group, the calves are all within 1 week of age. This management system has reduced our incident of calf scours to 0% this year, our second year using the system. Last year, in our first year, we treated 4 calves out of 460 spring calvers. And those weren't really that sick but we weren't taking any chances. If you have scours troubles, we would highly recommend this system. To the "official" version, we have added our own twist. When we work calves, we shoot the dams with an oil-based paint ball. This helps us easily identify those cows that have calved. Plus, it is strangely satisfying to splat one with a paint ball. You can't keep the paintballs anywhere near a heater in the truck though, or they will go off in your hand. Experience is an excellent teacher. ;-)
February was blessedly short and we are well into March as I write this. Soon, we'll be starting the MGA synchronization regimen on the heifers. Hard to believe. That date always shows up sooner on the calendar than expected for some reason. You'd think after this many years, I'd catch on.