Greens make switch to fall calving system
By Jean Caspers-Simmet
simmet@agrinews.com
Date Modified: 09/09/2010 9:23 AM
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CASTALIA, Iowa —Dale and Karen Green's Spring Valley Farms is in the midst of fall calving.
The farm with pastures along the Yellow River northeast of Castalia is a Century Farm started by Dale's great-great grandparents in 1851.
Last week the Greens hosted a tour of their Angus and composite seedstock operation as part of the Iowa Cattlemen's Association northeast Iowa regional meeting.
The fall calving cows had just come back to the home place from the pasture to calve the night before the tour.
"We're switching to fall calving," Dale said. We've always winter calved, but old age is creeping in. It's not as much fun to get up and check cows when it's 30 below as it used to be."
The Greens started calving 85 cows on their home farm last week. Two contractors are winter calving another 75 cows. Dale provides the females, all the genetics and AI, and he buys back the calves in the fall.
The Greens run purebred Angus and composite cows. In the past the composites have included Angus, Gelbvieh and Salers genetics. About three years ago they started using Simmental bulls quite a bit in the composites.
The first heifers from the Simmental sires are calving this year.
"We hope to maintain three breeds in our composites," Dale said.
The Greens have been pleased with the composites. They have a much better success ratio breeding young composite heifers than Angus heifers.
Dale breeds everything AI twice around then turns out the clean up bull.
"Ninety to 95 percent of our calves are the result of AI," Dale said.
He averaged the estimated progeny differences for the Angus sires used on the cows calving this fall. They are in the top 5 percent of the breed for calving ease, the top 3 percent for weaning weight, the top 2 percent for yearling weight, the top 2 percent for Angus Weaned Calf Value and the top 3 percent for Angus Beef Value.
The Greens use top Simmental bulls that have good maternal and carcass traits without a tremendous amount of birth weight. He has used quite a bit of the Sheer Force bull.
Dale works with Larry Moore from the Postville Veterinary Clinic.
"Larry has done us a lot of good," Dale said. "I rely on Larry's advice for herd health. We do a lot of vaccinating, and we're very satisfied with our herd health."
The clinic does the herd's embryo transfer work as well.
When calves are born, Dale gives them 55 CC of blood serum orally. The blood serum comes from five to six donor cows that have been vaccinated for scours and test negative for Johnes and BVD. The blood serum is frozen and used as needed.
"It helps," Dale said. "We have very little scour problems."
Dale makes a high quality homemade mineral mix because he doesn't feel that commercial mixes have enough selenium.
The Greens merchandise 65 bulls at a sale the first Saturday in February. They set a floor price for each bull and the buyers decide what the bulls are worth. People write their names on a board under the bulls they want to buy. If there is more than one buyer, they draw from a deck of cards with the high card getting the floor price. From there, the next high card can raise the price.
"It sounds kind of funky when I describe it, but it has worked well," Dale said.
Dale plans to sell the contract heifer calves as bred heifers and keep the replacements from the fall calves.
The Greens also operate Greens' Sugar Bush, a family maple syrup operation.