When is the best date to calve? Well, it depends. Several factors help determine the best time to calve including geography, forage availability, weather, labor, marketing and the cow herd type, and producers should consider the trade-offs for the operation.
If I was a calf, I think the perfect day to be born would be May 5. It’s beautiful weather and forage is about coming on, so mom’s going to hit peak milk when there’s plenty of good forage out there in a short or tall grass prairie.
“When you ask this relatively simple question of when’s the best time to calve, it is complicated and needs to be thought through,” says Bob Larson, Kansas State University DVM.
Larson considers the optimum weather for both calving and breeding, and for optimum price value of 500-lb. weaned calves and for yearling calves kept post weaning to determine when would be the best breeding and calving seasons.
The conclusion? Everything is a trade-off.
“There’s probably no one perfect time, but I think you have to look at productivity,” Larson says. “I don’t want dead calves. I want my feed cost to be low, but I want to at least consider the marketing window of when those calves will hit the market that I want to hit. There’s a lot to consider.”
Considerations for best calving dates:
- Geography, weather and forage availability
- Labor
- Cow herd and marketing
“Really low temperatures, cold and wet are hard on newborn calves, and extremely hot temperatures with a high fly load can be hard on newborn calves in the middle of the summer,” Larson says.
Asking when forage is greening up and when forage turnout needs to be is a big part of the decision, says Phillip Lancaster, K-State cattle nutrition specialist.
“If you’re in a fescue belt where you get a good forage regrowth in the fall, I like fall calving,” Lancaster says. “If you’re in a warm season type of situation, then I like a late spring calving. I’m not a proponent of this kind of late-winter calving type of stuff. I want to be later in the year than that.”
Lancaster adds research shows calving later in the spring is beneficial from an economic standpoint and from a cow reproduction standpoint.
“That cow is getting that peak forage quality during early lactation and helps her rebreed better, maintain body condition score better, and I’m not feeding a lactating cow on a hay and supplement through late winter,” he says.
Avoiding feeding cows a hay-based diet through late gestation and early lactating is the goal for Larson.
“I would much rather have that be based on a grazing forage,” he says. “That depends on how far north or south we are and also what forage type.”
Labor is another consideration.
“We have a lot of people that have corn, soybean, wheat and cattle,” Larson says. “I might really prefer calving in April and May, but that’s a lot of labor on the crop side of the operation.”
Marketing and the cow herd type plays a role in when to calve. Oftentimes seedstock producers calve in January or February because they are selling yearling bulls and want them ready for breeding season.
“If a bull calf is born in February, and I expect him to go out and start breeding in May, that makes him a long yearling,” Larson says. “That’s an appropriate decision for the maturity that I need that bull to be for his first breeding season.”
For commercial producers, calf prices change at different times of year and producers can modify when they wean and market calves without changing calving seasons.
On the Drovers Facebook page, producers shared their responses and why they chose their calving season. Katy Jones of Rocking J Ranch, who raises cattle north of Homer, Alaska, shares her example of assessing a combination of factors to determine when she calves.
She says she’s typically calved in February and March, but is looking at moving it back to January and February.
“March can get wet and we have what’s called breakup season, and everything is sloppy,” she explains. “The ice is there, but it’s melting, so you end up with mud. So you’re fighting mud and ice, which is not a good combination.”
Mud also harbors bacteria.
“You end up with your joint ills, your navel ills, your pneumonia issues, all your respiratory issues, all of that stuff in trying to calve in those months,” she adds.
While January and February typically sees the coldest temperatures, wind and snowstorms, Jones says she only has to worry about cold and piling up snow. To combat that she uses calving sheds and monitors her small herd of crossbred cows with cameras.
“I would rather check my cows every two hours for two months and have every calf alive and well, then not have to worry about checking them and have dead calves,” she says.
Jones markets all her beef direct to consumer as there are no auction markets or packing plants in Alaska.
“From weaning through the summer our calves are putting on 3 lb. a day on grass pastures,” she says.
Brad White, K-State Beef Cattle Institute director, says producers might not dramatically change their calving seasons, but they can tweak and consider trade-offs to be more effective.
“It’s not set in stone,” White says. “Sometimes we get into momentum, and we calve at this time of year and get into that cycle of, I don’t really like calving in March or February, and you can tweak that a little bit, but there are trade-offs the more I slide towards spring. If I’m in a place where it gets really hot during that time of year, breeding can be more challenging. So, look at all of the trade-offs all the way through.”
