It has been a minute since we’ve given you all an update on our Angus mamas and the spring calving season. Plus, May is National Beef Month so what a better time than now to share about our beloved cattle herd!
On our farm, we started the “spring” calving season towards the end of January with 30 sweet ladies expecting. Some were cows (female cattle that have already had a baby) and some were heifers (female cattle that have not had a baby), and while our calving season has become a little longer than we prefer, we only have 4 left to calve!
We have had an incredible calving season with a number of bull (boy) calves, but the majority being heifer (girl) calves. We will keep a large number of the heifer calves to add back to our herd and will most likely sell the bull calves for someone else to feed them out as steers. Unfortunately, one calf was still born. It is just part of the risk we take raising cattle, but out of the 26 that have calved, we are grateful our loss percentage was so low. Definitely doesn’t make it any easier though. When we have a still born calf, we essentially “lose” those nine months that mama was pregnant, so we have to start all over. But we take care of that mama to ensure she is healthy and can carry another baby!
Jacob has slowly started the process of inspecting our pastures to determine how much work we need to do on the fences. We have a few pastures scattered throughout the community, so we want to ensure they are all ready to go when we can turn out our cow/calf pairs the first part of June. The recent rain and heat have done wonders for the pastures in helping the grass green up and grow. I love being able to help Jacob with fence work – every year he teaches me a little bit more, so hopefully I’ll eventually be able to check and fix fence on my own! 😉
Checking cattle has become a family affair. I enjoy taking the time to help Jacob with chores when I’m out on the farm with him. And our sweet niece, Savannah, and sweet nephew, Bryce, (Ben and Jessica’s kiddos) are always ready to go on a piggyback ride to the barn to help Uncle Jakey too!
Being that May is National Beef Month, I will have a recipe to share with you all later on this week. I cook with a lot of ground beef and the recipe I’ll share is my very first original one!
Trying to carve out more time to share farm stories, recipes, and lifestyle tidbits with you all. April and May have been incredibly busy months, but with summer right around the corner, we are excited to get outside and create some more content to share. Ben and Jacob are hopefully getting back to planting this week after the rain and storms we received several days ago, so I am praying for warmth and sunshine so the farmers can finish planting their seeds.
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Rooted in ag and led by faith,
Ellyn