Calving Traditions?

Calving season is upon us and ranchers everywhere are busy with their cows as they have their newborns. Traditionally, we ranchers watch our cows like a hawk, making sure each calf is alive and well. It seems to be ingrained in our minds that a cow cannot calve on her own. Most of our time spent "calving" is in driving around a pasture or leaning on a corral fence watching an

animal do what she has done for millions of years without ANY human intervention. We build calving barns, we bed cows down with straw, we dry calves off with a towel, and we even spray their navels with iodine. Then we watch the calf to make sure it will get up and nurse.

What are we really accomplishing? If you analyze the labor that we expend and how many calves we really save, it just does not make sense financially. Half of our death loss will come from things we can't do anything about. Weather, birth defects, disease, and "fluke" accidents are largely unchangeable in calving herds of cows. The "presentation" problems (backwards,

breeches, leg-backs, etc) are solvable with labor. But those occur in such small percentages that it's hardly worthwhile LIVING with our cows to save those calves. The typical rancher will spend over $5000 in labor watching over 100 cows in a two month period. If that rancher had a robot to feed and water his cows and no one EVER looked at them during calving season he would still have over 95 calves to go to summer pasture. Is this not a good enough percentage?? No calf on earth is worth $1000 in labor. The rancher would be better off to let the robot feed the cows and go flip burgers at McDonald's for minimum wage. Then he could come home at night and get a full night's sleep and quit pulling calves in the cold.

Now I don't want to work at McDonald's. And I'm not going to sit inside and watch TV. I'm a rancher and I take pride in saving my calves. If I see a heifer having trouble calving I'm going to help her out. I LIKE to do it. I LIKE to drive around and watch cows have baby calves. Call it entertainment or call it "ranching tradition." Let's not kid ourselves into thinking we are pocketing much money by doing it.

Nathan Lee, January, 2004