Herd Health

Calving season is an exciting and nerve-wracking time of year. While we hope each cow will calve on their own, with a live, healthy calf, any beef producer knows that often life goes awry and we find ourselves with a prolonged or difficult calving, known as dystocia.

Calving season is a highly anticipated event for cow-calf producers. They’ve spent the last year making genetic selections and management decisions in hopes for a healthy and superior calf crop.

Strong work procedures and routines are vitally important when calving time arrives at the farm or ranch. To help assist with the birthing process, most cow-calf producers are equipped with a calving pen.

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is the number one cause of feedlot cattle death in North America and represents more than 70% of all feedlot death and sickness. BRD is the single largest source of morbidity and mortality in feedlots, causing an estimated $2 billion to $3 billion in losses annually.

It’s 2 a.m.; we’re sound asleep in hammocks, nestled between two shade-bearing trees, and then it begins.

In today’s cattle industry, feedlot pen checkers often work alone and require the ability to safely and efficiently pull sick cattle from a pen.