how do you weigh your calves?

Its best to have two people. I have a little ai type box I put my scale,tatto stuff,ear tags and etc. It is best to get them in the afternoon when they are taking a snooze. I carry box in one hand and bar in the other. Right before I get to calf I drop the bar out of my right hand and try and grab calfs rear leg if they are up. I can drag calf 10 yars or so back to bar. Have everything loaded to go tagger, tattoo gun etc. I weigh calf last cause cow usually gets concerned with this process. I have tripped calves with a kick under back legs as they are running. You may not be able to catch 1 out of ten this way. There are a few things that can go wrong. If the calf directs a well placed kick to the opened up box you may have tattoo numbers and various other equipment scattered over a 20 x 20 yard area.If the calf gets loose with the harness over its head with the noisy banging scale dragging along behind it the process is uasually written off as a failure. If the cow steps on the box and splits it into while warping the tattoo gun in a non fixable condition it might be a problem. If you only 2 three numbers to do the 333 calf you might have a problem. If you yell at your wife with unkind words while the calf is dragging you acroos the lot it might not be good. If you grab the calve while it is suckling the first time it might not be good. If you tag a calf coated in afterbirth you may have to ride in the back of the pkup if your wife is with you. If the cow pops you in the head and pops out a lens on your glasses you may need a spare set of glasses. If the calf scours at an inappropiate time you may smell funny the rest of the day. Everyone has they own approach.

We don't do everything at once, we weigh as soon as the calf is dry enough to pick up and have a premade ear tag in the tagger ready to go, he tags them and then puts the sling on and weighs them. 
We used to tattoo at birth, but found we had too many of them that by the time we were showing them you could no longer read the tattoo, so we do that at weaning now.

(lol)  aj...im just wondering...all that advice, is it based on personal experience???  (very funny stuff)

I think aj should come help us weigh calves when we get started calving!  We could use the extra experienced help!!

We use a spring type scale, sling and a push bar.  Yes, sometimes that spring jumps and gets stuck on a heavier weight but just lower the calf & restart the process.  Would love to have a digital system but this is  portable & it works and it was cheap..    Like the some of the others, all we do is tag & weigh the newborns.   

I wish I started tagging with some of you with those fancy contraptions that lift the calf up for you to weigh cause I'm the one that has to lift the calves up when I get them rigged up, and for some reason padre always takes his sweet time reading the scale, and some of those bigger calves really make the ole arms tired.

I still use a spring scale and a "pigging" string amd two arms. I also tape them to see how close the two are. RW

Here's our setup

randiliana said:

Here's our setup

Click to expand...

How do you get that out to the calving pasture? RW

Believe it or not, we don't. Every calf makes the trip through the barn. Most just get a quick trip into the barn on their way by. We have a pasture we calve in and once the cows have dropped their calves we move them to the newborn pasture for about a week or 10 days (both pastures/pens are about 5 acres). This way, we can watch close to catch any illness and make sure that there are no other problems. We walk through all the babies about once a day, unless we are having problems. Once they hit about a week old and the weather has warmed up (usually about Mar 15-20) we kick them out onto the home quarter where they will stay until the pastures are ready for cows. We feed once a day, when we check on everything.

If you want to see more of our set up, go here

http://ranchersperspective.blogspot.com/2009/02/our-corral-setup.html
http://ranchersperspective.blogspot.com/2009/02/into-our-barn.html

I'm afraid our opperation is too geographically challenged for that. ;D RW