From the Barns: Calving underway

It has been a short and quick month, but February turned out to be about as nice a month as we could possibly have for this time of year. March weather has come in like a lamb, so if the saying is true, it will turn into a lion at some point this month. It is still winter, but we are inching closer to spring. I would say we are somewhat dry and hope it doesn’t stay dry for an extended period, but it is nice not dealing with mud this time of year.

Calving season is well underway, with a good number of calves on the ground. They are from the early set of AI bred heifers. The second group of AI bred heifers is due to start calving March 11 and David tells me there are 60 head due on that day. Obviously, they will end up calving over a several day period and some that didn’t stick will end up having a calf later on. We have moved the mature cows to their calving pastures, so needless to say that March is going to be an extra busy month and much attention will be given to keeping an eye day and night on these females.

If nothing changes, later this coming week we may go ahead and wean our fall-born calves. That will cut down a lot on feed going to the cows, and we can get these calves straightened out and ready for some spring grazing. They should wean and start on feed easily, as they have been eating alongside their mothers at the feed bunks. I guess we will go ahead and pull blood on these cows and check for pregnancies.

Speaking of that, this past week we had the vet up to use ultrasound to preg check 94 heifers that we bred this winter. The heifers had one round of AI, then cleanup bulls turned in. Results were a little below expectations, unfortunately. The heifers had been divided into two groups and it was noticeable that one of those had worse results than the other. I don’t know if there turned out to be a problem with one of the bulls, although he was experienced and had a solid BSE last fall. Of course, there are some heifers that just aren’t fertile and will never get bred, so there could be multiple things to assign blame to.

We did end up selling two more loads of fat cattle to USPB in February. We were very excited to see that the cattle with our genetic base had outstanding quality and yield grades. Ended up with 75% to 80% Prime. We sold a load of non-Beasley genetics that graded 86% choice, with only two Prime. We keep confirming that not all cattle are the same and those numbers are also reflected in the dollars that we get paid for the cattle. I think it is likely that we will sell three loads of fats in March, two with our genetics and one of the other cattle.

We semen tested a dozen bulls last week, as we had them sold and they needed to be delivered to their new homes. All went well except for one who had to be culled due to an injury that affected his reproductive ability. All of these bulls are staying in southern Illinois. Some of them went to a farm that is working with us in our calf buy-back program. Others are new bull customers and hopefully we can use this to start a new customer relationship and see those calves winding up in our feedlot.

We were able to get the yearling steers weighed and sorted up by weight. Based on that, divided into five groups, placed in the feedlot and now transitioning over to a finishing diet, although the lightest group of steers are still on grower and still in one of the feeding traps. Two additional pens in the feedlot also now on the finishing diet. All of these cattle should sell in the July-September timeframe. We will start looking for and sourcing cattle born last fall now to keep the flow going so we pretty well always have cattle selling and starting new ones on feed simultaneously.