Wintering Calves with their Mothers – Late Weaning
By Heather Smith Thomas
Many stockmen calve in the spring and wean in the fall. This works well for those who calve in February-March, or seedstock producers who calve in January to have bull calves old enough to sell as yearlings in a spring bull sale. Today, however, a growing number of producers are trying to calve in sync with nature, calving later in the spring, on green grass. This puts calving at a time when cattle don’t need hay, and weather is better for newborns.
Calving in May-June works great, but then there’s the question of when do you wean the calves? They are a bit young for traditional weaning in October/November so some producers are leaving calves with the cows into winter, weaning in February or March. There are advantages to leaving calves on their mothers longer, even through the winter, especially if calves are born in May-June. The calf develops a more efficient rumen if he can nurse mama until he is about 10 months old, according to the late Gearld Fry, a stockman in Arkansas who studied cattle nutrition and genetics for many years.
Grass production is the basis for cattle-raising; almost all cow-calf operations depend on grass. Yet this fact isn’t emphasized enough in today’s cattle industry. The type of animal that feedlots want—that they can make money on—often won’t make as much money just on pasture because they are wrong body type. Fry pointed out that today most stockmen must change their cattle genetics and their management, if they want to be profitable with grass.
“To become most efficient at digesting forage, a calf needs to stay on his mother for ten months so the rumen can develop to optimum potential. The cow’s butterfat—not the milk—is what enables the villi in the rumen to fully develop. If the calf doesn’t get the butterfat for about 10 months, his digestive ability is inferior to what it would otherwise be,” said Fry.
It is important for the cow to help feed the calf for the first winter of its life. “You cannot feed calves a man-made feed or supplement that can equal what the cows will give them. The dam’s milk is designed for her calf.
Young animals need proper nutrition at the right stage of their lives. There is a window of opportunity for each part of the body to develop. When that window closes, it’s all over. There’s nothing more you can do to make that animal develop,” Fry said. An example is growth of leg bones in the young animal; after puberty the cartilage/growth plate at the ends of the long bones stops forming new bone, and height growth is halted.
Mother Nature programmed cattle, like bison, to spend the first winter with their mothers. “You cannot do as much for a calf through winter as his mother can. Even at the expense of the cow’s body condition, you are still better off to let her feed that calf. If she isn’t calving again until May or June, it doesn’t matter if she loses 200 to 300 pounds from her summer weight. If she has 45 days of green grass before she calves again, she will put on enough body condition to have a healthy calf and breed back again within about 85 days after calving,” he explained.
There isn’t much nutrition in dead grasses—especially tame pasture grasses—once they mature, dry out or freeze. “Whether it’s stockpiled grass or hay, it still contains all its micronutrients but has very little actual energy. It doesn’t take much energy, however, for a cow to produce butterfat; all she needs is adequate digestible fiber.” Her rumen creates energy during breakdown of fiber.
“In the lactating cow during dead of winter, 75% of the fluid her udder produces is butterfat rather than milk,” he explained. She produces less volume than she would on green grass, but the quality is very high.
“Another thing most cattlemen rarely think about is the protein in the milk. In the beef cow the ratio is about 1 to 1. In other words, if 4% of her milk is butterfat, about 4% of it is protein. When her milk has that balance, it enables the calf to develop properly—the perfect diet for that calf. There was a book written in the 1700’s, called The Milch Cow, that mentioned this, and this concept was taught in universities until about 1920 when “new” science put all the traditional wisdom aside,” said Fry.
Bison are the most closely related wild animal today to cattle. They calve in April, and breed back quickly. Two estrus cycles is all Nature gives them. If they don’t get pregnant, they skip a calf. Their estrus cycles, along with the bulls’ testosterone production and peak fertility is seasonal. By contrast, domestic cattle have been selectively bred for certain desired traits; they have been gradually changed for several thousand years, and will breed (and calve) year round.
“Cattle are ruminants with a 9-month gestation, like bison. If we imitate nature and calve during April and May like bison, and let the calf stay at mother’s side through winter, all she needs is 45 days to dry off and prepare for the next calf with adequate colostrum, and then breed back,” said Fry.
“If she calves in mid to late-April, you would be breeding in June and early July. Then you would wean the calf the end of February or early March—whatever time it takes to give her 45 days to dry off and be ready to calve again. When you wean the calf, you’d give him the best hay you have, until there is green grass for him.”
Canadian Ranchers Try Wintering Pairs
John and Deanne Chuiko are on a 3000-acre ranch (CJ Ranching, in Saskatchewan) homesteaded by John’s grandfather in 1941. This is a cow-calf and yearling operation, with the yearlings summered on grass.
“We are a grass-based operation. We mimic Nature as best we can, and try to learn more every day,” John said. Their cow herd has been moving genetically toward more efficient and productive animals that perform well on grass. John and Deanne want cows that fit their operation, focusing on dollars per acre instead of dollars per head. They’ve found that moderate-frame cows work best in their operation.
“We want cows to be about 1100 to 1200 pounds—with lots of body and not as much leg. They need to thrive on forage; we’ve gone many years now without feeding any starch to our cattle. It not only makes more sense financially but because we raise grass (and not grain) we want cattle to do well on forage. We have mainly brome grass and hay and whatever else Nature gives us,” John says.
“We’re trying to take our eyes out of the selection process, and let Nature do the sorting to select cows that fit our environment. There is a certain body type that seems to work well, and the cows in our herd are evolving to that.”
Their cows calve in May-June, on grass. “We leave pairs together through winter and wean in late March or early April when calves are about 10 months old. We heard Steve Campbell give a talk about Gearld Fry, who recommended keeping calves on the cow for 10 months. He talked about the advantages of forage and mother’s milk, rather than being weaned earlier and put on a concentrate ration. Keeping calves on the cows longer helps calves mature at an earlier age and they require a lower percentage of their mature body weight in feed for maintenance, over their lifetime,” John says.
“This is how all wild animals do it. Deer and elk in our area have their yearlings with them. They stay with mom through winter and even after she has her new babies. So we decided to try this with our cattle,” he explains.
“We have young cows that grew up this way, and it’s been gratifying to see how well they perform. When calves stay on their mothers longer, there is no sickness during winter.” They stay in family groups, are not confined, and not stressed, and thrive.
“For us, the most expensive time is winter, and the cheapest feed is summer grass. We want our calves to gain the most weight on grass and not on hay that we have to put in front of them in winter. We don’t want to use much hay. They are growing their frame on hay and milk, and we don’t give them any starch. They do nicely on hay and mama’s milk and are very content. Mom is educating her baby on what it takes to survive on our ranch,” John says.
Calves mimic mom and do what she does. “We bale graze the cows and when we let them into a new area they may eat on those bales for a while and then go out to graze if the snow isn’t too deep. They keep grazing when they can; mom is educating her baby on how to find grass.”
The cows have access to water whenever they want it, but they also lick snow. If they are out grazing and don’t want to walk to water, they just eat snow, and the calves learn to lick snow, following mom’s example. Licking snow is a learned behavior; many cattle that have no role model to follow are slow to learn how to use snow.
There is no stress for calves during winter; they are happily staying with mom and doing what she does. “When we wean in late March or early April, many of those cows have dried up already. As they get closer to calving again, Nature is telling them it’s time to wean the current calf. Their milk flow is dropping off and they may refuse to let the calf nurse. Mom is just there for moral support; the calf stays with her but soon gives up trying to nurse.” The cow may move away or won’t stand still for the calf, not allowing the calf to suckle.
“When we pull the calves away from the cows, there’s not much stress—very little bawling or pacing the fence. Many of those calves are no longer nursing.” They are very independent by that age and don’t need mom for moral support.
“Those calves go to grass after weaning—after a short time on bale grazing until the grass is ready. There’s less labor involved through winter because the cattle are together with just one group to feed instead of two,” he says.
During winter the main goal for the calves is to grow their frame. “They might gain only a pound a day because they are simply growing and not getting fat. By the time they go to grass as yearlings that next spring they have the frame and the rumen capacity to bloom and put more meat on that frame,” John says.
If calves are wintered in a feedlot and get a lot of starch and then go to grass, there is a period in which they seem to go backward for a while because their rumen is not optimally developed for handling forage. Those calves adapted to eating grain and concentrate feeds and their rumen bacteria are not programmed for optimum digestion of forage. “By keeping calves with their mothers, on nothing but forage, we program them for a lifetime on our ranch, and for what they are going to eat. We need animals that fit our environment. When those calves hit green grass in the spring they gain weight immediately because their rumen doesn’t have to readjust,” he explains.
Nature programmed all grazing mammals to feed their young until such point that the offspring can handle adult feed on their own. “They are learning everything from mom and eventually it’s just moral support from mom. We see this with multiple generations in the herd; the cow has her current calf and her yearling heifer tagging along. The family group often stays together.”
One of the biggest advantages of keeping pairs together through winter is that the calves stay healthier. “There is less sickness, so there’s hardly any cost or labor in taking care of sick ones. Medications today are expensive, and we don’t have that expense,” he says. Being confined and stressed when weaned at a younger age makes calves much more vulnerable to illness.
“Cattle are intended to be out on the land, making our soil and pasture better, and it’s just more natural to have the calves with mom, learning how to become a cow in our environment.”
The yearlings spend the summer on grass. Steers (and heifers that are not kept as replacements) are sold in the fall. “We’ve noticed that these yearlings gain a lot of weight from August through September-October. I think nature is preparing them for winter, telling them they need to put on as much weight as they can. Those last 2 or 3 months before cold weather they gain a lot, so in our program we keep them on grass until about the end of October. We try to sell them just before it gets cold.”
