this week on the farm... working cows in spring

Old MacDonalds Kid's have gone to university and they're home running the farm now, so it is large, it's more specilized, they use technology, but you know what? They still operate it with the same care, commitment and values their Grandparents did - Crystal Mackay

{this week on the farm...}

We have around 100 cows that will give birth sometime between February 1- March 30, what that means is around April 20 the mammas are ready to be re-bred.  So about 3 weeks ago we split the cow/calf pairs into 2 different breeding groups, where we generally put the younger cows with the smaller bull and the older cows with the bigger bull.  The trick is to breed for the fastest growing calf with out causing birthing issues, the more calves a cow has the easier she births.  Last Friday, Ben decided he had enough of the mud in the winter pens, it was time to move the cows to the pasture.  So we waded into the mud and got the cows/calves into the corrals....
 sometimes this goes smoothly...
 sometimes we leave a gate open and the cows do one big circle and end up where they began...

  

once we get them into the corrals, we briefly separate the mammas from babies, then send the calves through the chute for their shots.

 They are then ushered through a series of gates and pens until they are let loose on pasture.  Through out the summer we rotate them though a cycle of pastures, they will eat 2/3s of the grass in one pasture, then we move them, to give the grass a recovery period. The hope is that it rains enough for them to be grass feed well into the fall, until the snow returns.  Once the cows are on pasture they become very low maintenance for us, the calves will fatten up nicely both nursing from momma and learning to eat grass.

{if you have farming related questions please feel free to ask, I will answer as best I can}