Volume 20 Issue 1 January 2021 What’s Inside Change In Calving Season, A Major Turning Point
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From The Gate Post — Never a Better Time to Buy a Simmental Bull/ Le meilleur temps pour acheter un taureau Simmental
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Breed Improvement — Ultra Sound and Not So Sound Investments/ Bons et moins bons investissements avec les mesures par les ultrasons
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Change In Calving Season, A Major Turning Point Switching to June calving about a dozen years ago was a pivotal move for Paul and Lori Kinnee of the Ten Bar Cattle Co. in Alberta’s Peace River region. Story By Lee Hart
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es it required changes in herd management and marketing plans, but it also delivered some real benefits in reducing operating costs and not having to fight adverse weather during calving season. Overall it was one of the best decisions they’ve made in their beef cow-calf and backgrounding operation at Brownvale, about half way between the towns of Fairview and Peace River. Over the past 18 years they have developed an intensively managed, year-round grazing operation that’s built around a commercial straight-bred Simmental cowherd. Their management efforts and commitment to the Simmental breed earned them recognition in 2020 as the Alberta Simmental Association Commercial Breeder Of The Year.
The Kinnee family of Ten Bar Cattle Co. From left: Lori, Raelle, Josh and Paul
Vet’s Advice — Udder Edema: Clinical Signs and Do We Treat?
“I just hated trying to calve out cows when it was -40C in April,” says Paul Kinnee with a laugh, thinking back to several years of calving seasons that started with heifers calving in February and carried through with cows calving through March and April. It wasn’t 40 below every April, but he describes calving season in their area as being a “roller coaster” of weather conditions, so it was definitely one of the leading reasons that led them to June calving.
What’s Happening
And Lori admits she was a bit reluctant to make the “cold turkey” move to early summer calving in 2008. It was a bit hard on her nerves. “There it was August and the bulls were still in the yard and I pointed out if there’s no conception there’s no pay cheque next year,” she says now with a laugh. The bulls were turned out about August 20 for a 50-day breeding season, and June calving has gone smoothly every year since.
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Born and raised on their respective mixed farming operations in central Alberta — Lori was raised on a cow-calf, feedlot and grain operation at Edberg, while Paul grew up a few miles away on a mixed cow-calf and grain operation at Kelsey. Both communities are south of Camrose. Both Paul and Lori grew up around Simmental cattle that were included in cross-bred breeding programs on their respective home farms. Married in 1995, they farmed with Lori’s parents for a few years before deciding to start their own commercial cow-calf operation. Finding a homestead with suitable land they relocated to Brownvale in 2002, bringing along a 200 head cross-bred herd of Red Angus/Simmental females to the new Bar Ten Cattle Co. headquarters.
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“It had been a beef operation at one time, that hadn’t been used for a few years so we definitely had to make it our own,” says Lori. While Paul adds that except for the barn “there aren’t too many original boards left on the place.” As if starting a new farm in 2002 wasn’t a challenge enough, the Kinnees only had one calving season under their belt before the BSE crisis hit in May 2003. “We survived BSE but in the years that followed it made us step back and look at our operation and really think about where we wanted it to go,” says Lori. “We wanted to develop a program that improved efficiency and also worked at reducing costs.”
Commercial Country
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