ST. PAUL, Alta. – Ron Richardson half jokes that he has his truck started and ready for a fast getaway when he makes his cattle confession.
Richardson doesn’t wean his calves.
Instead the producer from Olds, Alta., lets Mother Nature do the work and he collects the extra money.
“There’s no sickness, no feedlots and no corrals anywhere,” said Richardson, who accidentally discovered the no-wean method during a drought in 2000.
That year he only had enough feed for about half his cows. He weaned the calves from the younger animals, but left the calves on the older cows and turned the group onto a field of oats he had swathed for grazing.
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“We took it week by week and watched to make sure they were staying in good shape,” said Richardson, who has continued to not wean his calves with good success.
“It’s such a low cost, easy management thing,” he told the recent Grassroots Cattle Conference in St. Paul.
Richardson used to begin calving in mid-April, wean the calves in the fall and sell them the following April, at about a year old.
Now the cows begin to calve in mid-June, he doesn’t wean and he sells the yearlings the following year, often after the cows have had a second calf.
“There’s a number of options,” said Richardson.
This year he left the calves on the cows until they were about 13 months old because cattle prices were better than at 12 months.
Because Richardson rents most of his land, he’s always looking for new ways to look after his 450 cattle, which are spread over several kilometres.
It’s not uncommon to see newborns and yearling calves from the year before in the same field as their mother.
Contrary to popular belief, he said the yearlings don’t continue to suck from their dams when the cows freshen with their new calf.
“It just doesn’t seem to be a problem,” he said. “It’s a natural thing that happens. The cow weans her calf.”
Richardson estimates it costs about $1 a day to background calves if they were weaned from the cows. The no-wean method isn’t free, but it fits in with his plans for his cows. This year he has his cattle on barley stubble that had unthreshed grain.
“Every year is different.”
He also estimated he saves money by not backgrounding calves the traditional way.
“The calves are being backgrounded by the mother. It simplifies your corrals, you don’t need a feedlot and we don’t move our cows.”
Since he stopped weaning, he’s heard that others have tried it, but few people publicly admit it.
“Everybody thinks they’re nuts.”
