Producers considering a change to spring calving instead of winter calving were advised last week that challenges can arise during the transition.
Glen Duizer, an extension veterinarian with Manitoba Agriculture, sees several merits in spring calving, particularly the potential to prevent scours by having calves born on pasture instead of in pens. However, experience has taught him that not all cattle in a herd can handle the transition and deaths will likely occur.
“It’s hard in the first year,” he said, citing the likelihood of cows dying or losing their calves.
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“In the second year, you’re going to see a few more and you really start questioning yourself on it. By the third year, it really starts to turn around.”
Duizer worked as a private veterinarian for 10 years before joining the provincial agriculture department. Five of those years were spent in a mixed animal practice in Nova Scotia and the other five were in a food animal practice in southeastern Manitoba, where he worked mainly with dairy and beef cattle and hogs.
He shared his thoughts last week during the Manitoba provincial grazing tour and elaborated in an interview. His opinions are based on his experiences working with cattle producers rather than on scientific studies.
Duizer said the cows most likely to have difficulties during the transition to spring calving are those with a history of problems or of needing assistance during winter calving.
“Cows that are going to require assistance on calving are the ones you’re going to have to watch. I wouldn’t say that I saw it any more in heifers than in cows.”
Spring calving is not for everyone. Producers with a mixed operation may not be able to juggle the demands of calving season with planting their crops. Others may not have the land base to establish the larger, more open paddocks needed for spring calving. As well, purebred cattle breeders generally need to have their calves born early in the year.
However, in his experience, Duizer has never heard regrets from cow-calf producers who changed to spring calving. The cows that encountered problems typically were ones that the producers would have culled anyway.
Producers contemplating the change may want to cull their breeding herd beforehand. Focus on animals with a history of calving problems and whose merit has fallen into the “grey zone” of whether they are worth keeping, Duizer said.
With winter calving, expectant cows typically are kept in a more confined area and calving difficulties are more easily caught through producer vigilance.
Calving problems are harder to detect when the cows are spread more widely across the pasture, as in a typical spring calving scenario.
“On a large open paddock it takes an exceptional person to find that problem-calving cow in time,” Duizer said.
Insect control is another issue. Calves born in spring could suffer more from a high fly population than those born in winter that are already at 200 to 300 pounds before insect season takes hold.
