Waiting for Calves

BTAP Thor, born Jan 2011, pic taken Sept 2011

There aren't any calves due to be born on the farm this year until about March 23. That is much later calving than I like, but that's the way things have worked out since loosing my herd bull in June of 2011.

I much prefer to calve in January and February, even though the weather can bring ice and snow.  The early calves will automatically be bigger and more marketable in the fall, and if they are being kept for breeding stock, will be ahead of other heifers and bulls when they reach their second birthday.



This isn't Tino, but shows how calves love to snuggle in the hay.

Cattle are hardy and like cold weather.  One of my fondest memories is of a calf named Valentino who was born on February 14 in -4 below zero degree weather. The cow chose to calve outside the barn on the leavings of a round bale. Mama was a sweet little red Limousin heifer and she did a great job of taking care of little Tino.  I found him huddled in the hay, covered with frost but happy and healthy with plenty of warm, rich cows milk to keep him going. Mama cow didn't take him to the barn until he was two days old.  He grew up to be one of the best bulls we every calved and the farmer who bought him has always loved him and the calves he produces. 


BTAP Thor was born on January 30, 2011 in an ice storm back in the woods. His mother wouldn't leave the woods so I took straw and hay and grain to her and she bedded him down under one of the wild cedar trees that grow all over southern Ohio.  It was rain or ice or snow every day for the first seven days of his life and I worried every evening when I went to check on him that he would be frozen to death. His mother Valentine, was 11 years old at the time and I worried she wouldn't be strong enough to take good care of him, plus she was alone among the coyotes.  Her daughter Violet and the bull, Tommy Boy stayed near by most of the time, so I shouldn't have worried. I named him Thor because some of the snow storms that first week included thunder.  Today Thor is a big, beautiful Limousin bull with calves of his own due to be born in May and June (he functioned as my clean up bull after the AI's this past summer).

BTAP Thor last fall after a summer of breeding cows as the "clean up" bull.