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Western Nebraska | Check out the forums on ranchers.net. There has been a lot of discussion about calving date. We went from Feb-March to May-June after we got hit three years running with terrible blizzards and lost a pile of calves due to weather. Calving cows on grass, especially that have been grazing grass for a while is the easiest form of calving I have ever done. Our older cows are checked, at most twice a day. Most of the time they are checked in the afternoon when I go out to do the tagging. The replacements are checked through out the day, but they too are calving on pasture so they aren't checked at night. Usually I will check them when I get up and right before dark and then maybe a couple of times during the day. I have a very low incidence of calving difficulties, usually associated with a leg back or some other wrong presentation. I have seen cows give birth to backwards calves with no help. There is a huge amount of money to be saved in reduced hay costs as well.
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