Cow Palace, our maternity ward. Copyright 2010 Link Bar Ranch Life Photography. All rights reserved.
A couple inches of new wet snow this morning is typical this time of year. Calving season will start very soon. This is our maternity ward for our cows and heifers. It has sagebrush covered hills that face a southern slope. The sagebrush offers wonderful protection from the wind and cold for the new calves, the southern facing slopes warm up the earliest and the snow melts from them the quickest. It also gets our cattle off the meadows so we can irrigate for hay at the same time we are calving. It isn’t good for a calf to be born in a pond of water! There is 80* artesian water that comes out of the ground here. The cows like drinking this warmer water, especially on cold days. Because this is such a nice place for a cow, we named the maternity section of our ranch, Cow Palace.
The view is spectacular from the "Table". Copyright 2010 Link Bar Ranch Life Photography. All rights reserved.
This cow has a newborn calf parked under the sagebrush. I ride my horse through the maternity field for the cows (experienced mothers) twice a day. There are names for various parts of this field. The Table is a big flat place at the top of the hill that the cows really like to use to find some privacy to calve. Then there’s Baby Alley. This is a draw that is protected from the wind and the cows will bring their calves off the table when they are old enough to travel. It is on the way to the Feed Grounds. As you might expect, the Feed Grounds is where we roll out the hay.
The heifers (females that haven’t had a calf) are in a field closer to the corrals and maternity barn. We ride through them every two hours (day and night) to make sure all the heifers are doing fine. If one needs our assistance, then we bring them in to help with the delivery. In the day time the heifers are in a field we call the “day pen”. Unique name, huh? Then late afternnoons, we bring them into two fields that have areas lights on the perimeter. We call these fields the “night pen”. That way, when we get up at night to check the heifers, we can turn on these lights and see what is going on. We breed for calving ease, especially in the heifers. A heifer is two when she calves. So she has some growing left to do herself. (We keep a cow in the herd until they are ten to twelve years old, but they have to produce a good calf each year to stay in the herd.) We feel like the extra labor pays for itself with the increased number of live calves. Our ranch is well above industry average in the live calf department.
Calving season is long hours, hard work in all kinds of weather. But watching the miracle of birth makes it my favorite time of year.
A two day old Angus calf. Copyright 2010 Link Bar Ranch Life Photography. All rights reserved.
Tags: cows, healthy calves, heifers
