Tagging Calves

Spring is here and with that brings “new beginnings and new babies”. This is the time of year we all look forward to. The rush of last year’s AI season finally coming into play! Tagging calves turns into a family outing enjoyed by all of us. It’s a good thing most of our cattle have awesome dispositions, because ring around the ATV could be quite dangerous with kids!

This year we moved our calving up a couple weeks earlier due mostly to our bull sale and wanting a bit more age on the bulls that we sell, and “turnaround” out at Agrium where Dirk works during the week.

The first couple weeks of calving brought snowstorms and really super cold weather. The outlook wasn’t looking good, and we tended to have a rough start losing somewhere between 4-6 calves. Any way you look at that is a $1500 to $5000 dollar loss depending on the gender. Luckily for us things turned around and the weather improved and the calves kept coming. The conception rate by AI was higher this year than last mainly because we kept Dirk healthy and all in one piece.  We also had some exceptional ET (embryo transfer) calves born which are SOS x Macho bred. We also have gotten a lot of “chrome” this year. (Calves decked out in white.)  I can hardly believe how much they have all grown. It is always exciting to see a new baby being born. Clay and I kept watch out our big front windows; occasionally we would need the binoculars. I sometimes felt bad for the poor mother cow; I can only imagine the horrific pain she must be feeling times 2!  But they always seemed to pull through and mother the calf once it was born.

Before tagging the calves we like them to be at least a couple hours old. We typically would head out to pasture in the evenings after dinner, with the sleigh in tow. Sometimes the crew was so big; the outing required 2 ATV’s. We ride up to the pair slowly, and then Dirk makes a quick snag and grabs the calf all the while trying to keep the mother calm. The sleigh is a really cool invention and makes tagging & giving shots to the calves real easy and within reach. We tag all of our heifers on the left and the bulls on the right. I like this, I can easily identify between the two. Dirk then records all the data such as the tag number, gender, calving ease etc. into his little black book.  It is amazing the amount of data this is compiled and recorded in managing a cattle herd.  We then move them to the “pair pasture” across the road with the calf in the sled and the mother following close behind.  The pairs join the other newborn calves and we head off for another one! This is an outing that happens almost every night for about 30-45 days. Surprisingly it never gets old and is an event we all look forward to, prepare for and plan on!

Looking forward to 2013! Wow, that sounds odd!