More Scours Update

I am happy to report that we continue to see a low incidence of scours. We likely only have 100 or so head left to calve (out of 600) and thus far have treated less than 30 head of calves. We've lost 3 calves due to scours. We lost a calf yesterday whose momma wouldn't take care of it (is this a mob issue??) and we've lost a few other calves for various reasons. All in all, I think things have gone pretty well but we most likely aren't entirely out of the woods just yet.

On some side notes, I have to admit I'm pretty jazzed that we appear to be 75% through calving after only 3 weeks...that's pretty impressive. We had a 94% conception rate last year and it appears the bulk of them got pregnant upon first estrus. Not too shabby.

We have made a slight adjustment to moving the mob. We had been leaving the gates open or simply taking the entire fence down when we moved the mob...that allowed the cows to get back to their calves. This seemed to work very well, especially with the newborns that didn't want to move or were hid out. Now that the bulk of the calves are getting a bit older, we are rounding up all of the calves that don't stay with the cows and pushing them thru the gates (there are maybe 40 or so that we have to round up versus a few hundred a week ago). We then lock the gate to the pasture, keeping the mob in the new paddock. We are going back a few hours later and letting the few head of cows back that don't have their calf...they can then go back and get their calf and return to the mob. The problem we were having was that with the fence down, the mob would return to the already grazed pastures to hang out...not what we were wanting. We hope this continues to work. Obviously as the calves get a little older, this should get easier. I'll keep you posted.