WINTER WONDERLAND

1/9/2021

7 Comments

A couple of weeks ago we went out on a frosty cold morning to corral the heifers.

It was cold. You can see the steam coming off of the heifers.

It was so pretty. I couldn't stop taking pictures.

That is steam coming off the cattle.

These heifers will start calving in a couple of weeks. As much as we need and want snow, we are glad that most of it has melted before the babies hit the ground.
Stay tuned for baby pictures soon.

7 Comments

Dan Hyland

1/11/2021 06:51:54 am

LIke to see the snow for moisture but yes, not fun to drop calves in snow!! Good luck out there.

Elisabeth

3/27/2021 11:56:28 am

Thank you for sharing these amazing pictures!
In 2019 I started following this Blog and then somehow lost sight of it. During home quarantine I had the time and opportunity for rediscovering it. Since I work in the agricultural industry in Austria, it is very interesting to see how things work elsewhere. I really appreciate that you take the time for sharing this.
Best wishes to you all,
Elisabeth

Tana

3/27/2021 05:42:29 pm

Thank you. I was out of most of 2020 after having back surgery so I didn't get many pictures. But I am working again and just need to get the camera/phone out more. Thank you so much for the comment and for following my blog. I will try to post more often.

Elisabeth

3/28/2021 04:02:14 am

I hope your back is doing okay again, I read about it in an earlier blog post.

Yes, more frequent posts would be great of course. But I understand that there is not always time for that. Also I can imagine that calving season is quite a busy time. Looking forward to the calf-pictures, I hope everthing went well.
Now that you have to get them pregnant again, I was wondering how AI works with so many head. First I thought all cow-calf operations use bull, but in an earlier post you wrote that you do AI. How do you manage to detect the ones in heat when there are so many? Here in Austria most dairy farmers with more than 70 head do a course on AI so that they dont´t need the vet for it. But since we still have many places with a lot less head, the vet has to do it. How does it work at your place?

Tana

3/28/2021 01:01:16 pm

We run about 2000 head of mother cows. The only ones we AI are the first year heifers, which we have around 300 of. We use bulls in the cows. I can see how that was confusing. The heifers we heat synchronize then by using a stick on patch we can detect when they are in a "standing heat" It is all quite interesting.
We put the bulls out the first of June with all of the other cows. 1 bull for about every 20 head of cows, so we have quite a few.
I would love to show you our operation sometime.

Elisabeth

3/29/2021 07:52:44 am

Synchronization makes a lot of sense with that many. Otherwise it would be tedious work. These patches really are a cool thing, I managed to find them on Google!
I am guessing the reason you AI the heifers is so that you can select a tested bull with good calving ease?

Honestly? Visiting the states has been on my agenda for so long, but I never followed through.
Whenever posting a comment I have to state my e-mail adress, so I guess you can see it when I reply. Maybe you could write to me directly so that we could talk some more? That would be amazing.

Tana

3/29/2021 05:50:48 pm

I actually can't see your email.

WINTER WONDERLAND

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