Calving is progressing slowly, with this past week showing a major contrast in styles.

On Monday morning I took a look at the camera at 6am and, with all heifers lying out chewing the cud, there was no cause for concern.

An hour later, I walked into the shed to find a calf pottering about and making a successful effort at latching on to her mother’s teat.

I went about the regular feeding jobs and at 9am I spotted another heifer fit to calf. When I came back half an hour later, she too had a calf behind her. By 10am, that calf had also gotten up and sucked. They were ideal calvings and the two heifer calves had a combined weight of 62kg.

A heifer from a heifer is something I like to see for two reasons. Firstly, it speeds up genetic gains and, secondly, the calves tend to be smaller and the calving easier. It’s the first step to getting them back in calf.

I wish I could say the same about Wednesday.

One began calving around 9am and I left her progress. Ninety minutes later, there was a nose and leg in sight and plenty of pushing in progress.

I saw the head and one leg so I went off for the gloves and handled the cow. It was a tight squeeze and, no matter what I did, I couldn’t bring up the second leg. A job for the vet.

After one handling, the decision was made to section the heifer and the vet wasn’t overly optimistic about the outcome.

Labour

For once, labour wasn’t an issue as the vet had a veterinary student from Germany with him and I had an Australian friend visiting. An international calving team if ever there was one.

To prove how small the world is, it turned out my Australian friend had worked on a pig farm for a year near the German town where the student vet’s mother worked.

All went well, thankfully, and both the cow and calf are thriving. At 38kg, he was by no means a big calf but his leg bones were thick and that didn’t help his mother’s pelvis.

Later that evening I had another tough pull from a heifer for another bull calf.

These calves are from a new bull and hopefully the rest will be more straightforward – the earlier calves from him certainly were.

We buy bulls here to use on heifers as their sire is generally still in the herd. I believe that if you can’t use a bull on a heifer, then he shouldn’t be used on a cow. So it’s a gamble I take.

Getting the Aussie perspective was interesting. The two heifers would have either died due to a difficult calving or would have gotten a bullet.

Calving ease

Ease of calving is very important in a sector that is largely part-time.

The calving weights from the Derrypatrick herd in Grange were especially eye-opening, at an average weight of 43kg for Angus and 55kg for Charolais.

This is my fourth year weighing calves at birth and the average birth weight for the 196 calves born in this herd from 2014 to 2016 was 40.2kg.

I’m a fan of calving ease as it saves time, labour and unnecessary misery.

It doesn’t matter how much growth potential a calf has if it is born dead. After all, a dead calf has an extremely low weaning weight and sale value.

Functionality gets sacrificed for style in a lot of Irish cattle breeding. Save the style for weddings and improve the chances of getting a live calf and a saleable weanling.