Calving ease

I'm w/ you on this Elbee. The less stress put on mom & baby the better off they are. We waited a while on one heifer, could tell the calf was small so the guys thought she'd have it easy. Turned out 1 leg was twisted back strange. Was glad they went in & pulled because she might have been in labor for a while if not.
Never hurts to be cautious!

Red

I agree with Elbee - when you calve out large numbers (esp. synched heifers), you just have to be prepared and spend a little time with them.  We step in sometimes when we might not need to but just want to get things going right because of weather or whatever. 

The key things to have a good calving season:  1.  Pelvic size, 2.  Use a PROVEN CE bull & dont' worry so much about BW.  3.  Have the puller & chains ready & know how to use them    4. Luck & prayer. 

That said,  I think most of our pulls last spring were on mature cows with malpresented calves.. backwards or a leg back or some other odd thing.   

How long do you folks typically wait before assisting a heifer?  Once tips of feet start showing, if we don't see progress within an hour or so we usually put them in the chute. 

How long do you folks typically wait before assisting a heifer?  Once tips of feet start showing, if we don't see progress within an hour or so we usually put them in the chute.

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    If we see a heifer starting in labor - first stages, etc we'll give her a few hours.  If we don't see progress by then, we'll often get her in and check the calf's position.    Once the water bag is out - usually we'll check after an hour.  When we see feet out, we'll watch her and maybe try to give her a little hand assist.  We don't let them go too long once the feet are out - an hour at the most - usually less than that.    Also a lot depends on weather & time of day - we'll pull a lot quicker if it's really cold or going into the night - that way we can control the environment better.

Well we pulled one from a heifer as the feet came out because it was 1am and we had to get to the Ft Worth Stock with our other heifers in the morning. She would have had it with no problems but I did not want to have to worry about it.

One of the best ways we have found to help with CE is to have 2 1/2 yrs of draught (sarcasm) but then you have the issue of getting them bred when nutrition is low. Now that our drought is over we will see what happens to our calving ease. We still should be okay. We have only pulled 2 calves (because of issues) in the last 6 years, One was a backward presentation and the other was an over 100lb calf. I look for proven calving ease bulls for the heifers and will use normal calving bulls for the cows. I also have my heifer and cows checked for pelvic size and issues. Gentics will also play a huge role in calving ease. If you use a lot of outcross gentics then I believe the chances of CE issues increase. I like the bull that has proven calving ease ancestry in his pedigree.

Feet and nose, on the puller goes! That way I can go do something else and not worry about it!

ELBEE said:

Feet and nose, on the puller goes! That way I can go do something else and not worry about it!

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I am with you ELBEE - feet and nose I get the chains - if the calf is on the ground when I get back - that is an excellent thing - if not he/she will be soon....it really isnt a yes or no but you have to consider labor force, number of cows/heifers calving/ weather and the phase of the moon - if you have a "crew"  or a bunch of people checking vs one person on 24-7 the issues are different.

wish we had a calf puller, I'll make dad get one...


This past february we pulled a 108 HUGE square heifer out of a second calving cow, we pulled by hand and then got a 10 foot 2 x 4 and pivoted and pulled it like a lever, that was actually easy when it popped out I did a backflip in the barn dirt  After I sell my steer, im going to invest in a calf puller for sure 

Farmboy- just make sure you know how to use one properly. You can do more damage misusing one that being without it.

Red

ELBEE said:

Feet and nose, on the puller goes! That way I can go do something else and not worry about it!

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I check my cows in the morning usually before day light and then again in the evening during calving season.  If it is a hiefer I will pull the calf if the feet are out( I don't generally know how long she has been trying)  Cows I generally let her be on her own unless some thing looks wrong.  My experiance has been the quicker out the less stress on the cow.  Plus I hate wondering if they are okay.  I have been critzized for pulling to quick, but I do not lose many calves.

We almost exclusively use LBW Angus bulls on our heifers.  We have used one LBW purebred Maine bull that we've had very good luck with. 

We'll be calving out 44 of them starting the end of August.  They run on native pasture and nothing else after winter when they only get caked.  We bring them to our town lot at calving time.  The whole group will be brought in about 3 weeks before their first due date.  We usually have our first calf at about 274 days after the bulls first go out.  While in the calving lot, they get free access to round bales but nothing else.  Out of that group, about 4 or 5 will actually need help.  We pull a few more than that for many of the reasons mentioned previously (i.e. they are starting to calve about 5:00 pm on a Friday afternoon and we want to go to the football game).

A little drought does go a long way for calving ease.  I'm a little aprehensive about this year.  The heifers are pretty fat.