I’m coming near the end of my autumn calving season at the moment, with only five left out of a batch of 45.

The last thing I needed is all the rain that has been falling recently. The ground conditions have really gone downhill, and I have had to house other cattle, and wean spring-calving cows early, to take the pressure off the land.

My autumn calving season is August and September which probably could be better described as late summer calving. One of the reasons I chose these months was to be able to calve outdoors.

You would have thought that you would still get some reasonable weather in August and September. And usually if August is bad then September can be quite nice.

Normally I find that this herd of cows gives me a lot less trouble than my spring-calving cows. They calve outside and get staying out for a few months. This ensures I have strong calves at housing that are less prone to scour.

To be able to calve the cows outside saves so much time and effort. Not to mention the saving on straw and feed. I have managed to keep these cows out, but am working with small groups of cows dotted around a number of fields.

Unassisted

I have found that most autumn-calving cows and heifers will calve unassisted if left to their own devices in the field. Maybe that’s because it’s so easy to intervene in the house and perhaps we don’t give the cows enough time.

I calve my autumn cows beside my dwelling house which is away from the main yard. It is therefore difficult to get the cows into the shed and start investigating what’s going on. Because of this I give them as much time as possible.

Normally, I would be as impatient as any other farmer and, if I could, I’d be putting my hand into the cow to see how things were progressing. I have some cows that would let me do this in the field, but not many. Therefore, most are left to their devices.

But you always have a few that have problems, and when it happens, they are significant problems. It’s not simple getting a cow that’s in the full throes of calving into the yard. And, as sods law would have it, most of these problems are at night.

When running around a wet field at night with a torch or the light of a mobile phone, you can soon find yourself stuck or losing a welly boot.

Problems

So far this year, we have had to bring in four cows and one heifer to assist with calving. Only one of those has been during the day; the other four have been at night.

One was coming tail first and was no problem once we got the back feet up. Another had a twisted calf bed which needed the assistance of the vet. Then there was one that was calving on a really wet night which I took pity on. When I brought her in she wouldn’t settle so I had to help her.

The most recent one was a cow that had carried 298 days. In the end, I had to get the vet to do a caesarean section. All was successful, which made the run around a muddy field in the dark worthwhile.

Saturated

I had considered putting these cows into the house to calve but I’m very reluctant to do this.

I have had cows calving recently and the ground was completely saturated under them but the calf is up and sucking in minutes.

I have even seen cows that were on top of calving coming up to dark, but they would then wait to calve at first light in the morning.

It makes me think that the farmer is in more need of a nice dry house with lots of light than the cow and calf is. Nature has a wonderful knack of sorting most things out. We just need to observe, and be ready to step in when nature needs a helping hand.