Making Babies

Cattle laying in a field near a pond with the blue sky in the background.

Breeding season is underway! Decisions, decisions, decisions! It is time to make babies! Lots of things go into breeding cattle around here. We don’t use a lot of natural service bull breeding on our farm. We attempt to design our babies by artificial insemination (AI). We take a lot of time choosing genetics, from a variety of bulls, and match them up to our cows to determine which characteristics we are trying to bring out, diminish, or get rid of in our calves.

Needles, medications and heat patches.
Heat patches are applied after shots are given to bring the cattle into “heat” in preparation for AI breeding.

Breeding by artificial insemination gives us a greater variety of bulls to choose from rather than keeping one bull for breeding. The hopes are also that this translates into better profits. If you make good decisions, and the breeding matches have the expected outcomes, that should bring us better calves.

Cow in the head gate ready to get her shots. Time to make babies!
Its time for breeding!

Great cattle do not normally just happen. Great cattle are made.

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Hay, Fertilizer and Rye Grass

DI- photo from the farm

Winter in the south is upon us and you know what that means? 30 degrees today and 80 degrees tomorrow! For us on the farm, it means hay, fertilizer and rye grass! With the cooler days, the grass has stopped growing. Unfortunately for cattle farmers, cows eat grass! So, what do you do? You feed hay, plant rye grass, (which grows in the cold, or occasionally cold days; which in the south they call winter!) and you make sure it gets fertilized.

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What Happened to Thanksgiving?

What happened to Thanksgiving?

Last week I had to leave the farm for a week and we were waiting on one young cow that still needed to give birth. I really wanted her to have her calf before I left. With less than 12 hours remaining until I was to get on a plane, I noticed that she was finally in labor. Of course she had waited until sunset, so I would be monitoring her in the dark. As I went to check on her the first time, I found myself praying, under my breath; praying that God would protect our investments and that the calf would be born quickly, easily and safely.

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