Preparing for the Calving Season

(Courtesy: Lary Lamsa, Flickr, CC BY 2.0)

Calving season is an important and busy time of year as beef producers are preparing themselves for less sleep each night, while they spend more time observing cows close to calving. Nearly 91% of beef producers regularly observe cows and heifers during calving (NAHMS, 2017), and research shows doing calving checks every three hours yields best results. Yet, the best calving check regimen is not always practical or a guaranteed way to eliminate calving problems. Therefore, what can we do to make calving season a little less stressful for all parties involved?

Management Considerations

Sort into Calving Groups
Prepare your calving facility and review your pregnancy check list to see how many cows will calve in the first 21 days or first half of the season. Once you have these lists, sort the herd and you can manage cows by gestations groups (close up vs late breds). This will make more efficient use of time to closely check cows that may calve first vs checking the whole herd. Tagging cows at preg check with different color tags to correspond to calving group can help quickly identify early vs later calvers as well.

Review Sires
Next, review your management decisions from the past breeding season, aka, what bulls were in which pasture and their current EPDs for updated calving ease direct accuracy. CED measures percent of unassisted births and takes into account the size and presentation of the fetus. If a certain group of sires appears to be less calving ease than desired, making notes on calf weights, presentation,  and vigor will be important to review when it comes to using that sire in the next breeding season.

Body Condition Score
Heifers should be in a condition score 6 at calving (1 to 9 scale) and cows need to be 5.5. Pay attention to heifers and cows that very thin. Not only will thin females have less endurance during calving but their milk production and quality will be subpar. Moreover, their breed back the following season will be affected by condition score at calving (Houghton et al, 1990). Separating cows by condition score during late gestation is a good time to be adding weight to calving groups based on due date to ensure they meet calving time body condition score goals.

Provide Exercise
Cows need to be in shape come calving season, so providing adequate exercise prior to calving is important to their physical strength. Feeding cows out on range is a great way to keep them moving before calving season. If cows must be fed in a small pen during gestation, consider placing mineral in a corner opposite water or the feed bunk so they can move around the whole pen. Be careful to chase or haul cows close to calving, as fetal growth is occurring very rapidly and calf position can flip if cows slip or fall.

Know the Signs

If you observe a cow during labor, keep a close watch on her to observe her through each stage of labor and intervene, when necessary, based on presentation and stage duration. It is estimated 9% of heifers and 4% of cows need some assistance during calving each year (NAHMS, 2017).

Stages of Labor