Wow what a cold calving season!!!
I can never remember such a cold calving season in the last 36 years of doing this job. Even when we calved in January we would get the odd warm spell to let us catch our breath and catch up. This year it just doesn't seem to want to warm up.
We have been calving for about the last 2 weeks and have about 45 calves. We have 130 cows to calve so we still have a ways to go yet.
When the weather is cold we check our cows about every hour in the daytime and every 2 hours, at night. If it is warm we only have to get up once in the night at about 3:00 AM after checking them at 11:00 PM and then again at 6:00 AM. We have not had that luxury this year. All things considered everyone in our family still seems to be in good spirits even while running on very little sleep.
We have had very good luck with hardly any problems other than the odd calf that gets a chill and we have to them in our "hot box" to warm them up. This box is an home made box with a large hot air blower on the bottom to warm them up and dry them off and an infrared heater shinning down from the top to allow the calf to bask in the warm heat rays. An hour in the box and the little guys are warm as toast and ready to go back with their mothers.
The temperature and the wind chill have been so cold that we have had to put "ear muffs" on our little guys for the first few days or up till an week of age. If we don't these young calves just can't seem to be able to keep warm enough. Elna and Keri have made a lot of these ear muffs and we have been very pleased with how good they work.
We do have room in our heated barn for 4 cow calf pairs and for about 7 pairs in the unheated part of the barn. After that they then go to outside pens with open front sheds for the calves.
