Youngest got a couple of suprises yesterday morning LOL

[JD Seller]

We where -5 here yesterday morning. Really mean Thursday night with strong winds too. Not a fit night for man nor beast. Well my youngest called me to come over after chores. He has a lot of heifer feeder cattle that are around 1100 LBS. He woke up to find four of them calved Thursday night in the sub-zero temperatures. LOL They seem to be good Mothers to get a calf licked off and fed in that weather.

He wanted help in deciding what to do with them. They looked like good framed cows. They had not been implanted as they are selling to a "natural" beef supplier, not organic. So I told him if they where mine I would just sort them off and keep them. He really did not have any place to keep them separate but we gated them off in a corner for the time being.

He came over after chores this morning and asked me if I wanted them. I have room in the old barn to keep them penned separate without any issues. So we hooked up the stock trailer to go get them. Guess what we found. Three more calves. LOL So I now have seven cows/calves penned up. Little fellers seem no worse for wear. Already jumping around a little bit.

I mentioned to him about a month ago that I thought that he had bread heifers in that pen. He blew me off as these are "Fancy" calves with all this paperwork guaranteeing they will work in this natural program. Well there are 75 heifers in this lot. We sorted them this morning and I think there are at least 10-12 more that are bread. Vet is coming Monday as he needs documentation for proof against the seller. IF that many are bread then he maybe sort on the delivery contract on the finished end. If they calve they are thrown out of the program under the rules you feed under.

I fed cattle for several "natural" brands of beef over the years. It is a good program IF they can keep honest people in the entire chain. The only reason I quit is that the group I was with had a leadership change and they went totally organic.

The one I really liked the best is Laura's Lean. I fed for them in the 1990s. Good people to work with. It just got hard to get the numbers we needed under their program. The cow calf end was the limiting fact at that time.

Well any way I have some "new" brood cows for this spring. Might have more too. LOL

 

[LAA]

A local man had just the opposite happen several years ago, he bought a pot load of open heifers from a Kansas buyer and put grey Braham bulls on them, a few months later zero checked bred, after a lot of back and forth the seller finally figured out those heifers had been spayed by mistake with some others that were headed to the feed yard.

 

[David G]

They are calving here too, seems early.

 

[jacksun65]

JD Seller I have been to Laura's farm. She is a little strange since she had her accident, very reclusive now. Nice person though her house is huge 3 stories with a great double staircase.

 

[danofarming]

That would be a surprise! Local buyer/shipper told me that he could not ship heifers without a Vet examination declaring them open. I grow some stockers and know what problems they can be. So I would be interested in your receiving protocol for new calves coming into your lots. What weight are they when you put them in?

 

[JOCCO]

Was not commercial but dad and a cousin (at different times) ended up with a pig. Went out in the barn next morning and had 11 or 13 pigs or some such!! I guess it gives a good laugh.

 

[fixerupper]

The bull got through the fence somewhere. LOL Sometimes fat heifers have trouble calving so it looks like you had double good luck, they were born without assistance and the mothers are good. Why is it they tend to calve during a storm?

 

[jacksun65]

My mother wanted to raise some bottle calves. Well when mine went to auction she kept hers. Jan I told her she must need to worm her cows because they looked like they had a pot gut. So she went and got some pour on and wormed them. Three weeks later she goes out and there is a bull calf laying next to her cow. Never had a bull on the farm but the neighbor did never saw it here so it must have happened threw the fence. And yes she named the bull Wormy biggest worm you ever saw lol

 

[4520BW]

We bought a black heifer at the north American livestock expo once, she was registered and we put her in with a black bull that spring and she had red calf with a white face 9 months after we got her. We called the seller and they said a Hereford bull had gotten out at the show but did not know he had visited their cows.

 

[JD Seller]

fixerupper: I think it has to do with the barometric pressure. It just about always drops before and during a storm. I feel that triggers calving in cows close to term.

 

[T in NE]

Cold is easier on mom, warm is easier on baby. If mom survives but baby doesn't, mom can have another calf in 10 months. If mom doesn't survive neither does baby.

 

[JD Seller]

Jackson: I had not heard anything about Laura for 10-15 years. We met several times and we usually talked cattle. She was on our farm a couple of times. She grew up on a cattle farm around Lexington. I just looked up what she is onto now. It appears she sold the Laura's Lean beef business in 2009. Moved away from Kentucky. Did not like it and moved back. She is promoting organic farming, hemp cookies, and looking to build a moonshine/whisky plant in Kentucky. WOW quite a change. LOL

Not really She was a marketing person in New York before her Father's health failed. She came back to the family farm and then created the beef business to secure more of the retail dollar. She is a smart person but na?ve in some business ways. She wanted to grow the Laura's Lean business but wanted it all done with smaller cattle people like those she grew up with in Central Kentucky. She really did not like finishing cattle in the western states. She would refer to a feeding operation of much size as a factory farm. This difference was the main reason I moved on to other styles of feeding cattle. If I had tried to stay with her program I would not have been able to grow large enough for my sons to come into it with me. Some where deep inside of her she still thought that a few hundred head of cattle was a "lot". Tens times that is a start anymore.

 

[cumminspuller]

Well that is a nice surprise in a way. haha my first group of feeders I started with last year were around 265# when I got them. I had been feeding them for about 3 months. Walked down to the barn one morning and they all walked into barn to get their feed as they did every morning. I fed and walked back out and there stood a black baldy calf by the hay ring. Momma wasn't producing hardly any milk and the calf didn't make it 24 hours. Hopefully you have better luck with yours than I did mine.