Calving season requires ‘all-hands-on-deck’ at family ranch near Falkland, B.C.

Many cattle ranchers across Western Canada are right in the thick of their winter calving season, including one family-run ranch near Falkland, B.C., delivering close to 300 calves and nine sets of twins so far this year.

From mid-January until around late March, calving season at the Schweb Family Cattle Ranch is an around-the-clock job that requires long days, and in many cases, sleepless nights.

“My husband and I usually do a three-hour rotation, so we’re through the cows every three hours — that’s morning, day, night — especially through the night when we’ve got the colder temperatures,” said co-owner of Schweb Family Cattle, Trudy Schweb.

“As much as you’re tired or you’re weak and you don’t want to go out, you’ve got to go. With the price of calves now, you can’t risk losing them.”

Trudy and her husband Warren took over his family’s ranch near Falkland in 2015. They manage over 20,000 acres of farmland around the Okanagan, and while helping deliver the calves is hard work, Trudy says it’s a labour of love.

“Some days are pretty tough, you know a few days we had 14 or 15 calves in one day, and you just got to stay diligent, and it all comes around — we do it every year,” said Schweb.

Shortly after their birth, its crucial to keep the calves warm, dry and fed, especially when the temperature drops below freezing.

“The first few hours of their life are pretty important that they get up and get a suck, get that colostrum in them, and it’s just really important that you get them warm and get them up and get them going as soon as we can,” described Schweb.

“We had one that was born in early February when it was minus 30, and we didn’t get there right away, and she was pretty cold. It took probably six hours for her body temperature to register and get her going.”

Schweb says the newborn calves have become quite the attraction for those driving through the area.

“The weekends, especially — Sundays we have people stopping all the time,” explained Schweb.

“It’s quite uplifting for people that in a world now where there’s so much negativity, you know to drive out through a ranch and see the calves running and the cows happy, and especially now that people are really paying more attention to where their meat comes from — they want to see happy cattle.”

If you’d like to learn more about what the cattle industry is all about, the BC Cattlemen’s Association is hosting its 95^th annual general meeting and convention in Vernon from May 25-27 at Kal Tire Place.

For more information, click here.