Wintering calves with the cow herd

Winter feeding is one of the highest costs of raising cattle. Some ranchers who keep calves over winter are finding they can winter those calves more efficiently by leaving them on the cows, while also reducing illness and stress in the calves. Canadian Cattlemen talked to two ranchers to find out what it takes to make this approach work.

A Manitoba rancher’s experience

Brian and Sonja Harper of Circle H Farms raise cattle in southern Manitoba near Brandon. Most of their cattle are commercial, but they have a few purebred Shaver Beef Blend cattle, a composite breed developed by Donald Shaver, who was best known as a trailblazing poultry breeder.

“We also have some Lincoln Reds and a small number of Devon cattle. We keep using these two old-time British breeds to maintain our composite lines. All our cattle are selected for good production on forage,” Brian Harper says.

The Harpers have been wintering pairs together since 2010. “I met an old fellow from Arkansas named Gearld Fry and he planted that idea in my mind,” Harper says.

The herd calves in May and June, with a 45-day calving window. That means the calves are still young at traditional weaning time in the fall. Harper says they do much better if they can stay with their mothers through the winter.

“Some people even leave a calf on the cow until the cow weans it herself. We’ve never gotten that brave; we typically leave calves on until about 10 to 10-1/2 months of age. We calve in May and June, with a 45-day calving window.”

Many people say late weaning is too hard on the cows, and Harper says it does depend on the cows. “With heavy-milking cows, it may not work. You need cows fitted to this environment; there is a whole system that has to work together. The average cow from a conventional herd today probably can’t do this.

“Once we started wintering pairs together, a few cows culled themselves out, but our replacement heifers were better. They were better adapted to grazing through winter, feeding their calves through winter and re-breeding on time. Sometimes all we have to do is challenge the herd a little, and they sort themselves out.”

Another influence was Chip Hines, a rancher and author from Colorado. Harper read some of Hines’s books, and his writings made sense to Harper.

“We started challenging our cows, and every generation got better. We had less sickness in winter, weaning calves later. We still have an occasional case of pneumonia, but not near as much as we used to when we’d wean earlier and calves were confined in a corral.”

Fewer sick calves also mean a lot less work for the Harpers. “Our herd fits this type of management and it would be hard for us to go back to doing it any other way. When you pull artificial props out from under the cows, you find out which ones can manage and which ones can’t.”

Harper uses ultra-high stock density grazing for summer management, which allows him to stockpile a lot of grass for fall and winter grazing.

“We typically graze until at least Christmas. Last year the cattle were still grazing stockpiled pastures until January 5. Then we bale-graze for about 90 days — and go back into stockpiled grass by April. The snow is usually too deep and crusted for cattle to graze through winter so we utilize bale grazing. We watch body condition on the cows. If they start slipping, we know it’s time to go to the bales.”

Harper says they could probably stockpile-graze longer if they weaned the calves earlier, but then they’d have to feed the calves. But the biggest advantage to leaving the calves on the cows is that they learn from their mothers.

“They learn how to get into the bales and what it takes to get by on our place.”

It’s an ideal way to raise replacement heifers, he adds, as they are well adapted and acclimated to their environment. They learn how to forage and take care of themselves. Ultimately, they become better cows that don’t need to be pampered.

The main advice he has for producers who want to try late weaning is to not give up too soon. “Do it at least three years to enable the cattle to adapt. I think some folks try it for one season and say it didn’t work, but they didn’t give it long enough to know. The cows have to learn the system and the herd usually has to change a bit, genetically, toward the more efficient cows,” he says.

It helps if you have easy-keeping cattle that tend to be efficient on forage, rather than cows that milk too much and need more quantity and quality of feed to keep from losing weight.

“The heavy milkers weed themselves out. They may raise the biggest calf but they are also consuming the most feed and may not breed back.”

In Harper’s view, in recent decades beef producers started working for the cows instead of having the cows work for them.

“I got tired of doing that! It’s interesting how we’re coming back around to something more natural and discovering that old is new again. We’d forgotten some of the ways that used to work.”

Late weaning in Saskatchewan

John and Deanne Chuiko operate a 3,000- acre cow-calf and yearling operation near St. Walburg, Sask., that was homesteaded by John’s grandfather in 1941.

The Chuikos want cows that fit their operation and focus on dollars per acre instead of dollars per head. In their operation, moderate-frame cows work best. The cow herd has been moving genetically toward more efficient and productive animals that perform well on grass.

“It makes more sense financially because we raise grass and not starch,” John Chuiko says.

Chuiko says they’ve been trying to take their “eyes out of the sorting process,” letting nature select the cows that best fit their environment. “Sometimes a few animals that we didn’t think would work actually thrive, so we let nature decide which ones are best — the cows that do well on grass. There is a certain body type that seems to work well, and the cows in our herd are evolving to that.”

The Chuikos’ herd calves in May and June. They wean the calves in late March or early April, when they’re about 10 months old. This will be the fourth winter they’ve kept calves with their mothers.

“We’d listened to Steve Campbell talk about Gearld Fry, who recommended keeping calves on the cow for 10 to 11 months and talked about the advantages. He said it helps the calf’s rumen develop better, on forage and mother’s milk, rather than being weaned earlier and put on concentrates. Keeping calves on the cows helps the calves mature at an earlier age and then they require a lower percentage of their mature body weight in feed for maintenance over their lifetime.”

Gearld Fry stated that butterfat in mom’s milk is the ideal feed, containing the right amount of energy and protein for that stage of the calf’s life and development. Even when the volume of milk decreases in late lactation, there is still a lot of butterfat. It doesn’t matter that the calf isn’t getting much milk; the calf is still getting what it needs.

Nature programmed grazing mammals to feed their young until the offspring can handle adult feed on their own. “They are learning from Mom and eventually it’s just moral support from Mom. We see multiple generations in the herd; the cow has her current calf and her yearling heifer tagging along with them. The family group often stays together.”

Like Harper, Chuiko finds that keeping calves in family groups allows them to thrive and cuts sickness and stress over the winter. “We’ve done it long enough now that we have young cows in the herd that grew up this way, and it’s gratifying to see how well they perform.”

Chuiko also points out that their most expensive feeding time is winter, and summer grass is their cheapest feed. “We want calves to gain the most weight on grass and not have to use a lot of hay in winter. We idle those calves through winter, growing their frame on hay, and we don’t give them any starch. They do nicely on hay and mama’s milk and are very content.”

The calves mimic the cows through the winter. “When we let them into a new bale pod, they may chew on the bales a while and then go graze if the snow isn’t too deep. They keep grazing when they can; Mom is educating her baby on how to find grass.”

Calves also learn about winter water sources from their mothers. The cows have access to water, but also lick snow when they are out grazing and don’t want to walk to water. Calves learn to lick snow from the cows. Chuiko says licking snow is a learned behaviour, and cattle without a role model are slower to learn to use snow as a water source.

Once the Chuikos wean calves in late March or early April, many of the cows have dried up. “As they get closer to calving again, it seems like nature is telling them it’s time to wean the current calf. Milk production is dropping off and they may refuse to let the calf nurse anymore. Mom is just there for moral support; the calf stays with her but soon gives up on trying to nurse.”

By then, the calves are also independent. “When we do pull the calves away from the cows, there’s not much stress — very little bawling or pacing the fence.”

After a short time bale-grazing, the calves go to grass, which works well for the Chuikos. During the winter, the main goal is for the calves to grow frame, not get fat, and they might only gain a pound per day at that time.

“By the time they go to grass as yearlings they have the frame and the rumen capacity to bloom and put more meat on that frame.”

The yearlings spend summer on grass. Steers and heifers not kept as replacements are sold in late fall. Chuiko says they’ve noticed the yearlings have “tremendous gains,” typically from August through October.

“I think this is nature preparing them for winter, telling them they need to put on as much weight as they can. Those last two or three months before cold weather they gain a lot, so we want to keep them on grass until about the end of October. Last year it was November 4 when we sold them, right before it got really cold. That’s our sweet spot and the best time to market them.”

– Heather Smith Thomas is a contributor for Canadian Cattlemen. Her article appeared in the December 2021 issue.