The moratorium is over

I'm not sure what finally convinced Glen to plan a winter break from calving, but a couple months ago he told me there wouldn't be any cows bred from March 10 to May 10. Hallelujah, I said. Theoretically, that meant no calves from December 15 to about February 15. When reality is accounted for — the fact that cows calve early and late — we'd have about a month off.

I caught Glen looking at the breeding calendar early last week and he admitted that he wasn't going to wait until May 10. I know it had to be terribly difficult for him to ignore the heats the cows were showing. Yesterday afternoon when we let cows out, six cows were in heat — that's ten percent of our herd. I know Glen had planned to synchronize a bunch of cows to come into heat next week, but these cows synchronized themselves. I asked Glen when the breeding ban was over and he said, "Tonight!" So, the moratorium is over.

Now we'll have a rush of calves during the first weeks of December, since Glen synched and bred every eligible cow before March 10. And a rush again starting the last week of January.

At least we'll have a little break. Maybe next year we'll make it a whole two months.