Spring and calving

So hear we go into the first full week of April. Normally by this stage of the year I wouldnt be expecting to pull on a few extra laers and a wooly hat but that just seems to be the normal this year. What is spring? It looks like last summer given the amount of rain and snow that fell last week.

We can get over the weather but grass growth is way behind where it ought to be. How much is out ther, not a lot. I went out last weekend with a plate meter and we are sitting around 1600kgDM/Ha on the silage ground. What does that look like, well not very much to be honest, not even enough to wipe the mud off your boots.

Anyway on a brighter note our cows are calving nicely. there are 15 calves skipping around the sheds so far but we are on course to be done calving by the end of April. The Hereford calves are all by our stock bull Dorepoll 1 Jonathan, the Angus by Gigginstown House Triumph (our ex stock bull- hes now gone to a commercial suckler herd to make way for one of our ET bulls to be used) and the commercials are calving to Glenbrae Royal Irish a Beef Shorthorn bull.

All the calves are doing well with the only problem being some of the cows have too much milk which is a bit strange to complain about. As the calves get a bit older they can sort that problem out.

Its not until you start seeing cows calving that you realise the importance of calving ese and the associated traits. You look at some cows wonder how the heck they squeezed that one out and others wondering why they were struggling. There is a lot of emphasis put on birth weight as the focus of easier calving but thats not really the whole story. Small calves are great provided of course they have the later growth but there is more to easy calving than just KG's.

Gestation length is one. The shorter the gestation period the smaller the calve and the quicker the cow turns around to get re-bred, calving ease direct and daughters estimating the ease with which both the dam should calve and the resulting daughters. I would personally avoid a bull that would sire progeny that rank highly for calving ease direct and daughter. I believe that you could increase the incidence of calving difficulties over a period of time, if you are keeping daughters for replacements that is. If you are beefing everything thats s different story, which highlights some of the difficulties associated with using EBV's for making breeding decisions. "How do I get around this?" This is where having a breeding plan comes into effect. More on that later.

Back to calving ease. have you ever watched the nature problems and seen how wild cattle and horses etc are shaped? Wide through the pelvis and the pin bones. Why? Easy theres no one on hand with a calving aid!

Mother nature has much more experience of birth and breeding that we do yet we still have the ordacity to defy her at every opportunity. Cattle that are bred because they have difficulty calvings (havent you heard the quote "if she calves unassisted the calve isnt good enough") have to have a caesarian every time or lie about for a week after the calving and the calf has to be bottled becasue it cant rise.

Farmers are only too keen to invest money in housing, tractors, gadgets, or land but try and get them to select an animal to do a job using EBV's to assist and its just about impossible. The investment required to buy a performance recorded bull with the right EBV's comapred to an unknown quantity is small, certainely less than the price of the new tractor that could be coming down the lane with a much quicker return on investment too.