If you're thinking about implementing the Sandhills Calving System (SCS) for your 2008 calving season, now's the time to be contemplating your strategy and making those preparations, says Dave Smith, University of Nebraska-Lincoln (UNL) Extension veterinarian.

Named after the Sandhills area of north-central Nebraska where it was tested, SCS utilizes a series of calving pastures to minimize newborn calves' contact with disease agents. The idea is to minimize both the disease load and newborns' exposure to the disease agents until their immune systems are better able to withstand them.

“I like to say we're creating eight, one-week calving seasons rather than one, eight-week calving season,” Smith says. “We're trying to recreate the conditions of the first week of calving season during each of the remaining weeks of the calving season. We want a clean calving area without the presence of older calves that may be shedding pathogens.”

Some SCS specifics

SCS consists of a series of large contiguous pastures. You can learn more specifics at: vetext.unl.edu/publications.shtml?to=Beef (click on “The Sandhills Calving System to Prevent Calf Scours”), but basically here's how it works:

• Cows are turned into the first calving pasture as soon as the first calves are born, and calving continues for two weeks.

• After two weeks, the cows that haven't calved are moved to Pasture 2, with cow-calf pairs remaining behind in Pasture 1.

• After a week of calving in Pasture 2, the cows that haven't calved are moved to Pasture 3, and cow-calf pairs born in Pasture 2 remain in Pasture 2.

• With each subsequent week, cows that haven't calved are moved to a new pasture, and pairs remain in their pasture of birth (Figure 1).

The result, Smith says, is a series of pastures that contain calves all born within one week of each other. Cattle from different pastures can be commingled after the youngest calf is four weeks of age.

The age segregation prevents pathogen transfer from older calves to the younger calves. And moving pregnant cows to new calving pastures helps minimize the pathogen load in the environment, as well as a newborn calf's exposure time to those pathogens.

Smith says the key component is the age segregation of calves and the movement to new pastures of cows that haven't calved, rather than moving pairs.

But adopting the system that requires multiple calving pastures vs. a single traditional calving yard necessitates some planning early on, Smith says.

“October is a good time to get started, because that's when a lot of herds are doing their reproductive exams and considering their calving and winter-feeding strategies,” Smith says.

Here are some of his recommendations:

• Plan the pastures you'll use for calving and stockpile some forage on those pastures. The standing forage will help disperse the animals on those pastures and minimize the concentration of pathogens.

• Consider your herd's anticipated calving times. Calving typically begins with a few early calves, followed by a peak when most calving takes place, and finishing with a long tail-off period for stragglers.

  “Look at your herd's historical calving experience. You need to start thinking about what you need in terms of pastures and when during the season you will need them,” Smith says.

  For instance, if your herd's calving history is that a big influx of calves tend to arrive about the third week of the calving season, plan to utilize your largest pasture for that group, he says. “What you're trying to do is match cow numbers to the available ground. You don't want to overstock and damage the ground.”