Changing our calving season!

Spring means calving season for most people and calving season means sleepless nights and hard work, but for us, it doesn’t mean that anymore. Most people are just finishing calving season, but we are just beginning ours! When I first met my husband close to 10 years ago in high school, he and his family started calving March 1st and would end around April 15th. During this time, the winter storms and temperatures were incredibly hard on the cows and calves.

My husband has told me stories about the times when they would have super bad storms and have to be checking on the cows all night so they wouldn’t have baby calves frozen to the ground come morning time. They also spent a ton of time bringing in cows that “could” possibly be in labor to the barn and let them calve in warmer/drier conditions inside.

We continued to calve in March and April until 2017. Now we start calving May 1st (minus a few early birds) and finish around June 15. Calving for us now means only checking on our cows a couple times a day and watching the babies be born on warm, dry ground with some green grass.

Making this change has made a huge difference with our operation. Both our cows and calves thrive now. We still get the occasional snow storm, but they are not as harsh as the ones we get in March-April. We have noticed that our cows are in better body score condition and our calves are born full of life and ready to take on the world. That little change was a big decision to make, but it has helped us improve the ranch so much! So many other BIG changes are happening here on the ranch and I can’t wait to share all of this exciting new with you all in my next post!

-Amber-