Calving 2026

Part-time farmer here and just curious on the following scenario and what approach others take or would take:

Cow calves just before you have to head to work, do you delay going to work until you see he gets a suck, do you bottle/stomach tube him or once he's alive and healthy take a chance that he will work away himself to get a suck ?

I never leave the yard till i know the calf has sucked. As my calves are nearly all LM, its very rare to have a dopey one so they are usually trying to get up and suck once they hit the ground. They might need a small bit of help getting the teats at the start.

I try to avoid stomach tubing as much as possible and only when its really needed.

Back in the day if I'd calved before work and it looked healthy I'd probly leave it till I came home 9 hours later. Sometimes maybe got home at dinnertime but more often not.

Nowadays all you here is beeselence is needed in the first hour or 2, so if I was on a deadline to work I'd nearly try have beeselence thawing while I'd be calveing and it be stomach tubed and I'd be out the gap. I'm about home more now so don't have as much of a rush to day job.

All depends on job flexibility,

At the very least I'd put 2L of powdered colostrum into the calf via a teat bottle.

If they suck at it well I can be fairly sure it'll work out well, at least until I get back. If the calf doesn't suck well and there is no way I can stay to sort the calf out I'll tube the calf to keep it going until I get back.

I'd also do this if it was a late night calving.

However, giving the cows pre-calving minerals helps the alertness and vigour in the calf.

Stomach tube (I don't even try them w/ teat or cow unless they really chomping at the bit), 2-3L and if big calf 3-4L. Vet told me you don't have to worry then for 24 hours. Great peace of mind. I leave them with the cow then and keep watch on camera. Seldom have to do anything after that to get them going.

I'd keep her but restrict silage or feed hay during the winter.

I fed hay until about a month before calving this year and calves are nice n small and they calving away themselves so far.

@alan10 i used Ivantonov last year and again this year. Could get a small calf off one and got a good size bull last year as well but they always calved themselves. He’s after going up to 2% now and stars dropped I think in latest evaluation.

Does the cow have a genomic evaluation? Would be interesting to see her Direct Calving Difficulty figure. Some cows just always have big calves. Just in their breeding.

You just never know what way a cow and bull are going to click. My last cow calved last night to Avicii de mahony who is 22% for calving difficulty. she held to 300 days and had a big bull calf but calved herself in a few minutes. I've had four calves off that bull and all calved themselves. One of the cows who had a calf by him last year had a Negrita du lac bull calf this year who is 13% and we had a savage pull to get him out. You just never know what way they will click unfortunately.

Thanks for the input

Yep he's very big, feet curled on him, Id say he was tight for room inside :-)
Will be checking the geno sample to make sure it was the right bull. Never saw Ivantonov this big.

Yep used Sterling last year also LM8929, very lively - but thought that was from the cow as she went stone mad when calved. She's for the hook after this calving in few weeks.

Is there a need to register a calf that died before registration? I lost a calf about 2 days old. I tagged him, and sent him off to the knackery. I was registering a few calves last night, and tried registering that calf too, but it wouldn't go through. Just said 'this is a dead calf'. The only option I see to register a dead calf is to say he was stillborn, which wasn't the case. Should I register him as stillborn, or not bother at all?

Put a Saler bull like Knottown Roy on your heifers, breeds lovely cattle, especially heifers and very easy calved. If you start putting Saler bulls on your heifers you won’t go back to using Angus bulls on them. PG have a new polled Saler bull called Only PP also, should be ideal for heifers also

if there’s no registered calf at milk recording here the calving date is taken as 6 weeks before recording.

You can usually tell by how cloudy the eyes are wether the calf died during labour or it’s death started the labour. A hard labour can kill a calf.

Lost my first calf in years recently. Had an emergency off farm and by the time I got back to assist the heifer her calf was dead, an hour earlier and it would have been fine. It’s hard to explain to people that calving season is a 24/7 job and things can go very wrong sometimes.