It was -42 with wind chill on Tuesday but Wednesday was much better at -40. It has finally moderated some today ...... finally! At least now a calf born out in the shed has a chance of surviving a few minutes in the event that I am not right there at that moment. In this weather I try to put as many that are close to calving into the barn, but it is possible to miss a few. One night in a very cold spell last winter, I put 24 cows in the barn, as a storm was moving in. Through the night I carried 8 calves into the barn that had been born in the cattle sheds. None that I had put into the barn calved.
It is often hard to be 100 % sure which cows and heifers are going to calve first. In 2006, we synch'd and bred 40 head, implanted 18 embryos, and turned out 6 herd bulls in the period of 4 days. I have found some real differences in gestation lengths from our ET calves. Last year we had 18 days from the first calf to the last calf, on embryos implanted on the same day. The first calf born and the last calf were full sibs... and both heifers. BWs were 18 lb difference.
We need more snow as we have not had much this winter. At this point, we do not have enough to make our creeks run and we need some run off to fill some ponds.
We went into winter very dry so please send any extra moisture our way please.
We may get some cold weather but we do not get much ice. I can only remember losing our power once in my lifetime for more than 1 hour.