The lull before calving season begins is a good time to ensure that your cows are up to date. You should work them about 1 to 3 months before calving in order to ensure they will be on the right foot. This is also a good time to make some observations and to begin planning ahead. Here are some things to do before calving season begins.
Physical Exams
You will want to look over all your cattle to see if they will be in good physical condition for calving. Look at things such as her body condition score, her feet and how she is walking around. Another thing you should look at in your inspection is her udder. At this stage it should be hanging down lower than normal in anticipation for the lactation stage of production. If it is not filling as much as it should it may mean you will have to bottle feed the calf in order to offset her lack of milk production.
Culling Evaluations
As you are looking over the herd now is the time to decide if any of the cows will need to be culled. Do any of them have the wrong temperament for what you want? Are any of them getting up in age and may be no longer useful to your breeding herd? The main thing is that you will need to make management decisions based on where you want your herd to go.
Pre-calving Vaccinations
Prior to calving you will want to vaccinate your cows with a 5 way Lepto and a 7 way Clostridia. This will help prevent and diseases from being transferred to the new born calves.
Identifications
Inspect any ear tags to make sure they are in good condition and replace any that needs it. Having proper ids will help you with record keeping and if any trace backs is needed.
Nutritional Evaluations
Before the growing season begins you will want to do a forage and soil test analysis. This will inform you of anything that may be missing and what you may need to supplement. I discuss how to do a soil analysis in a previous blog post here.
Strategic parasite control
While you are doing your physical examinations you can see how your parasite, both internal and external, control is doing. If it is not performing like you want now may be the time to make any adjustments. Depending on your area you may want to start feeding minerals with a fly control IGR to get the jump on them.
The Texas AgriLife Extension offers a Beef Herd Health management calendar that you can follow if needed. It can be found by clicking here
