Fall Calvers

[RCF Farms]

We age going to have 4 or 5 cows due in Aug/Sept.  Just wondering is there anything we should do different as far as feeding them goes?

 

[Till-Hill]

I don't do anything differnt with my spring vs fall except fall calves always get creep feed.

 

[nate53]

I like fall calvers better myself, our fall herd started out as some young springs that didn't breed back.  But over the past several years has turned into our main group of cows, we've had better conception rates with the fall vrs. spring, and there is basically no calving problems as far as the weather is concerned.  Fall calves tend to be a little lighter at birth and hit a higher seasonal market price as far as feeding them out.  We wean the calves in March or April and let the cows graze all summer and are in exceptional shape going into calving and have a lot of condition to fall back on over the winter.  Winter is somewhat of a drawback because the falls do take more feed, with the bigger calves on them in Jan. and Feb. unless you stockpile grass?  Aug. Sept. Oct. (warm and dry), Jan. Feb. March.  (cold, wet, snow, ice, stormy).  Plus with the fall group you have somewhere to winter your bulls!

 

[ZNT]

You will have to feed the cows more, and creep the calves, but if you early wean the calves in January, the cows are typically already bred, and can be put on a bare minimum diet for the rest of the winter. In the summer, those cows will get greasy fat on grass because they are not nursing a calf. Run the fall cows on the worst pastures you have over the summer.