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| I feel for you guys with killer storms. Been there done that myself. One I remember was calving in a blizzard, it was the year a bunch of cattle got snowed over in the west and killed them with drifts and extremely cold temps. I had a heifer have her calf up and going, had sucked. I figured good deal, leave them alone as she had him along a fence nursing. Well I go back to sleep, wake up in two hours. Look across pasture, pure white and heifer standing there alone.
I had to get on 4 wheel drive tractor to get to her as snow drifted. No calf in sight, he had laid down curled up and snow drifted over him, killed him. I was sick to my stomach, he had been alive less than 3 hours ago sucking & standing up.
Another time we dried up in March, calving full bore. We even took dozer off tractor as we figured weather was going to be good. Wrong we got 25" of snow in a few hours, had to put blade back on to cut paths for cows to calve in. I don't remember the year, but it was a Saturday. I had planned to go to a bull sale. We just all tried to save anyway could that day.
As for grafting calves, no problem to graft month old calves. Infact better as calves are bomb proof at that age. Just skin dead one if needed. However I can totally respect not grafting one raising on bottle. A person can get wore out with keeping them all alive. Nothing wrong with letting kids raise bottle calves. You make better kids out of them, better to raise kids than heifer if a choice needs to be made. | |
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Blizzard
