 It really works out for me because I think the cattle stay in a little better shape. I don't have to put as much feed to them all winter. I can maintain them a little easier or I can get them out grazing. I can meet some of my grass goals of knocking back cool season grasses and I can have healthy calves on green grass. It just really works for me in my operation. It's a little less stress on everybody for sure because we typically don't have blizzards in May. I think it works well timing it with nature. So originally I had always calved on the 1st of April and with that being said you'd always get a few calves in the last part of March. I always started calving by the 1st of March. I don't have great infrastructure to calve in March or April or February so in order do I want to put a lot of money into that sort of stuff. Up here we calved heifers and checked cows and heifers in the middle of the night before school and dad would bring in chilled calves down in the basement where you give them a shower and blow dry them at two in the morning. Really it wasn't until probably 2018 we had a pretty severe April blizzard and then one in 2019 as well. Had a real bad winter one time was really cold and 1st of March coming it was like 20 below for 10 days. Then you get 12 inches of snow on the 15th of April that was kind of the last straw for me and pushing it back two weeks wasn't a big deal. 14 years ago Bob and I got married and we were still calving heifers in February or the 10th of March and then cows start 15th or 20th of March. He said why don't we push this back for killing ourselves to save a few calves and you can't sell dead ones. Just said how to do something different so went to May. So April 23rd is what we shoot for now. This year I started I think on the 3rd of May calving so and it was a pretty cool year this year so we had pretty slow grass growth early and it's coming along now. Once I cab later I can you know if the weather allows I can bring my cattle to pasture a little earlier right because I'm not moving you know baby calves in a stock trailer you know from my home place to here. So actually I get cattle out before they cab which is nice because there's always a flush of cool season invasive grasses, Brougham and Kentucky bluegrass and they do well on it early in the year and if I suppress it early in the spring I can try to promote my native grasses to come through later in the early summer to mid summer when the warm season grasses start to grow. But it really is a nice way to get some early season grazing and you know put those cows in good condition to cab successfully on their own. Typically we have a few calving pastures we work through in the spring. We're on our second one now we've been here for a week and we'll just essentially keep moving kind of as as needed depending on how fast they end up calving out. When we're done calving they'll they'll actually get joined up with another herd of custom heifers and be run as all one herd but we're just kind of waiting to be done calving. Well this year was a we weren't close to a barn at all we were you know four miles away from the closest barn so we just set up a tub next to a corral had a few that we had to get in but otherwise they have a lot better on their own when the weather is nicer too. We have longer probably longer rotation where we don't move quite as often with the newborns and the babies but the other thing is we just don't move as far taking the time to make sure everybody's paired up before you move them especially if you're gonna move them any distance is really important because it's hard to find baby calves sometimes when they're really little and leaving one behind isn't fun and so I think it's close moves and longer probably a little bit bigger paddocks that's what we do right now. What we're looking for in a bull and its traits we you know if I was gonna keep my replacement heifers I wanted a little smaller frame animal that would perform maybe a little better on grass that's really all we've really tried to do I'm okay with some smaller birth weight calves when you have them in the spring it's a little easier on everybody I like I really don't like pulling calves it's hard on the cows you know we've been pretty fortunate we haven't had to pull hardly any in the time that I've owned cattle twice I think in ten years. It's really important for me to just have an alive healthy calf. The calves are in good condition they're born on green grass we get better at that as we rotate a little a little better we're not treating as many animals last year I don't think I treated any pink eye I'd say generally we've saved money by doing it this way especially you know not having sick calves in March or April they're always seem pretty healthy we don't really have to do much to the calves after they're born it's been pretty smooth that way when we backed off calving we were I think 14 pounds back on the heifers and and nine pounds back on the steers I believe the calves just at the ground and they start growing instead of fighting for their lives and putting all their energy from the classroom and then mama's milk to stay in alive and stay in warm they're actually actually growing so no they catch up pretty fast the major changes I've seen moving back I've had calves in blizzards and it's just not enjoyable for anybody but the stress on me and my family and in trying to cabin April you know always has those challenges so the lower stress I think is probably one of the main ones I go to bed I want to go to bed and sleep and the thing with May calving on grass and I don't know why I've asked a lot of people nobody can give me an answer but most of them calves are born like five to seven o'clock in the morning there's no calving during the middle of the night is like as opposed to when you got got them shut up in lots and stuff and so if it wasn't for May calving and calving my three-year-olds I wouldn't I wouldn't have cattle today because I couldn't do it you know you can tell people and people can ask you about it but till you really experience it you don't realize how it changes your workload it just seems like everything's happier you know people and cattle and and the grass so it's kind of a win-win-win the second thing I really enjoy is being out on the prairie early in the spring so you're kind of in a little more touch with nature because you're checking them every day on the pasture you're keeping an eye on how they're performing and what they're targeting in the pasture and and monitoring your grass and how it's holding up so I think it's just it's really hands-on because you're forced to be with the cattle early in the spring they're out and about doing their thing so you you have to be right there with them you know guys will say about calving are you calving something I said well I I said how many fawns you got at your place well they look at you like you're dummy well I ain't got any you know it's too early for fawns I said yep that's right I said you better be doing it mother nature doing I said she's been here a lot longer than you have and I said she's got it figured out that you ain't out there in the winter time and doing all them things you got to look at the big picture my big idea the big picture is what mother nature does and intends for us to do you you got to have you got to look at that picture in my opinion in order to bake at work my saying is you could fight mother nature and you could win a few battles but she's going to win the war and it's if you want to be here for a long time you better be doing what she intended us to be doing well I highly recommend moving it back a little bit it's it's it's works well for me it may not for everybody but if you're looking to get started in maybe running cattle and and don't have a lot infrastructure or just all the things that you may need for earlier calving this is a great way to do it I mean it's it's relatively low cost I mean you get your cow's bread for early May and you can most years have them out on pasture by then and you don't have to have a lot of money tied up in infrastructure you may only use for a small amount of time so I'd say that be a good way to get started so it just works out I'm going to keep it that way I don't see any reason why I'd go back