Must have been one heck of a bull!!!

We now have twelve calves on the ground. There where nine born last night. We got them all dried off and sucking Momma. They seem to be doing fine this morning. We have them in small pens in groups of 4. So the Momma's can't wonder off from the calves.

The other eight look like they will calve sometime in the next few days they are bagging up. A few have milk so they may go today.

I will give the ranch credit in that these heifers are all good Mothers so far. It really helps that they are a gentle dissipation too. We can walk right up to them and they will let you touch them and check things out.

The youngest son is responsible for a lot of that too. He loves cattle and they have been bucket feed all the grain they got since we bought them. HE carries a brush with him and will brush them down once he gets them to let him touch them.

Between the the two sons and the three grand daughters those heifers where watched more than if they had been in the hospital. LOL The Grand daughters are all charged up. We usually don't have calves other than out in the pasture. So they see what going on but that is about it. With these being inside they are able to have a more "hands on" experience with them. They are learning a lot. The DIL was laughing that she did not have a dry towel in the house. The Grand daughters swiped all the down stairs ones for calf drying. LOL Well a good rub down with Momma helping lick them off seems to be doing the trick.

The Grand Daughters have already informed me that these Calves and Moms are going in the Smaller separate pasture by the House in the spring. Direct Orders from the Future SWMBOs. LMAO

So maybe one problem creates a silver lining too. They are getting knowledge that will enrich their lives.

wonderful ,and,, beautiful disposition is the magic word you are searchin for , lol,. ,,..did one bull do that or did you do artificial I,,. ?

How are you fairing out on heifer calves? They may not be the breeding you want but, hey, they are alive! And if they are not heifers then you really have not much to loose? Like playing a gaming table, this farming lark..... you win some you loose some only difference is, you can pull yourself out in another direction with the farming. Usually all is not lost!
Sam

one fun experance i had with a couple from town and they wanted to see a cow calve the little girl was spanish american and she keep saying baca have baby. she got so excited she started crying i was sure happy we didnt have to pull that one but then again it might have been funny when a future boyfriend started talking about babys.good luck

Priceless experience for grand daughters.

On the other hand, when I was 8, dad buys a dairy. I was in charge of the calfs. About one new calf every 3 days. After 10 years of that, it was priceless for me to go to college. I picked the college the greatest distance from the farm so I had an excuse not to come home on weekends.

Always liked an animal that showed good mothering abilities. It is extremely frustrating when they don't.
In another lifetime when I was milking cows I had an entertaining event one morning when I went to move a heifer that was ready to calve. She was tied in the row with the milk cows and when I went to move her to abox stall she came ahead, made a hard left turn and landed in the bottom of the manger managing to miss the water bowl on the way by. This is bad. By this time the calf is well on its way so I got it pulled. I moved two cows out from the nearest stalls and put the calf there for the heifer to be interested in, which she was but couldn't get up. I was in quite a quandry wondering how to sort this out. The bosses wife came along then to see why I wasn't in for breakfast yet. The farm dog came along with her and jumped over the gutter to look at this calf. That was the only time I had ever seen that dog do that. Even if the barn was empty of cows she would not ever cross that gutter but for that day. Anyway when the heifer saw that dog near her calf she was up almost as fast as she went down. The dog bailed out and I moved heifer and calf to a box stall. That heifer was an easy milker and carried on for a bunch of years with no issues.
Didn't mean to hijack your thread but your story made me think of this. Hope your luck carries through with the rest of this bunch.

Go back a few posts and he tells about it. Supposedly NO bull around when they were bred, bull turned in for April calving.

You got 12 out of 20 calves in 3 days, from heifers that were AI'd to calve in March/April, and a vet confirmed that? Some bull alright.
David

Sometimes it goes the other way. My BIL asked the kids in a youth group if they wanted to see a calf being born. They all eagerly wanted to see that.

After the event, my sister served them hot chocolate and cookies. She heard one of the girls comment: "I am NEVER going to have kids after seeing that".

Without comment.
Other post

I agree, sounds like a whole lot of bull.

If they had been AI'd,they would have been given a shot of Lutalyse to cause them to cycle and abort if they had been bred,then they would have been implanted with CIDRs to synchronize them.
Something's not right.
CIDRs

Thats something like what it first sounded like. I know some back grounders who feed MGA to prevent breeding/bulling while gaining their heifers. The breeding protocol is to take the heifers off the MGA, give a shot of lutalyse about 20 days after stop feeding MGA and turn out with bulls or AI, but sometimes they say heifers breed on the first cycle roughly 3 days after they stop feeding MGA.

Sounds like they were synchronized in this case,as many as are calving this close together,but bare minimum,the seller lied about when they were AI'd. I don't think there was a bull involved.

Something just does not sound right here.

I did not see anything about AI in your original post.
In Fact you said.....

The heifers can't be bred to the bull they say as they did not expose the heifers to him early enough for these calves to be from him

and

The ranch thinks that a hired hand turned the wrong bull into the wrong pen at the wrong time.

This all insinuates that you think the heifers were breed by a bull.
Even your post today makes it sound like you still think the heifers were breed by a bull.
"Must have been one heck of a bull!!!"

With all that in mind; the fact you have 12 calves in 24 hours and more on the way today....

My main question to the ranch you bought these calves from would be...
Why were these heifers synchronized????

rrlund: I don't know where you get that they where AI bred??? I never stated that they where. They where synchronized bred. That is for sure as the ranch does that on All of their heifers. They usually have 2000-2500 heifers to chose from just depending on when you want to calve.

I have talked to the place they came from they have figure out what was going on. These heifers where in a group of fifty heifers. I picked out the twenty I wanted. The rest where sold to other people. They are having calves too.

The ranch got the pen numbers mixed up between the office and the barns/pastures. They went back and looked at the actual time sheets/daily reports and found out the guys doing the work did the heifers in April. Then they where exposed to bulls. They are sorted by size and exposed to different bulls in groups of 10-15. Then after they are bred they are put back together. I picked heifers from two different bulls. That I knew when I bought them.

The heifers they where to breed got bred later. So they have heifers down south that are going to calve late. They have already verified that that group has not had any calves.

So they have two groups of fifty heifers that are bred at switched times.

I am not going to name the ranch as we have come to an understanding that works for us. I have dealt with them for years. Just an honest mistake. Easy to do when you have large numbers of cattle and hired help.

We are going to DNA sample the calves to make sure and then I will get papers on the calves I decided to keep as breed stock.

So far we have 7 bulls and 5 heifers.

So have a good day and we will argue about White tractors some other day.

I had a bunch like that a few years ago, in my hers. I pulled the bull out of the herd a bit early that year, and still got calves into January. They should have completed calving by Dec 1st. Only thing we can figure is that one of the young bulls was a bit larger than we thought....

cant take any sides here,I Know very little about what you guys are saying,but I Say come up to the green acres post,cant be much arguments there ,,,,

My apologies. I thought I remembered from the first post that they were AI'd. Guess it was just questioning which bull actually bred them.

Most of what he posts is

No Problem It is kind of confusing. I just was out of shape having calves in the middle of some nasty weather. Even that seems to be working out all right. The extra labor is exposing the Grand daughters to the facts of owning livestock. So maybe a good long term lesson.

Like I said in another post,I'm so scarred from the mess we had with the weather this past April and May I don't know if I ever want to go through another calving season. I was pushed beyond the breaking point by all that. Just thinking about it is like putting an already burned hand back on the stove.
Because of it,I didn't even turn the bulls out until July 14th and right now I don't know if that was even late enough.

Just guessing if this is a big outfit I'd say the hired help let the bulls and the heifers together and never told the owner once they got them separated.Not surprising that a group of heifers kept together would bred at the same time if you ever worked with a group of women they will 'sycronize' after a while for some reason.

rrlund: Your in MI right??? Your having some nasty weather now also???

I can understand the feelings of dread from coming off a tough calving season. You get hit in several ways.
1) The extra labor involved. That long drag drains your reserves, energy and emotions.
2) The emotional loss of a bunch of calves dieing or just being sick.
3) The cost of a loss or the meds to keep them alive.
These all combined can really hit a fellow hard.

I hope you have a much better calving season this year.

I usually calve in May/June. With the heifers calving first in April. We can watch them closer without field work getting in the way. The older cows just don't have much trouble by May.

Only the heifers know for sure and they aren't telling. All I know for sure is I didn't do it.

Michigan yes. I think we've seen the sun shine for part of maybe two days this month. I think December was 13% of possible sunshine or some such thing. The wind and bone chilling cold just won't quit.

I have had a cowherd for many years and around 7 was as many as we have had in a day.We have found if we AI all of them the same day it will still take 21 days for them all to calve.Calves 10 days early to ten days late are common.One year after a higher % of backwards calves someone told me I should turn my breeding chute around.Sounds like you are doing a good job and once they are dry and have shelter and bedding they are fine.With cattle at an alltime high its a good time to be a cattleman.

With good dispositions/mothering and a dry place to get them started, you should have some fine big calves later in the year. Good luck with them.