Fall Calving Season Brings New Beginnings
This year’s crop of babies leads the way for a new generation of Scottish Highland cattle at Ayrshire Farm
Rosemary, one of Ayrshire Farm's Scottish Highland dams, shows off her newborn baby.
This is the fifth installment in the WholeHarvest Year series, which aims to chronicle the farming cycle at Ayrshire Farm.
As the summer heat fades in the Virginia Piedmont, a new cycle of life is just beginning at Ayrshire Farm. It’s fall calving season: a time of year that ushers in a new generation of heritage-breed cattle just when many farmers are winding down from the bustle of warmer months.
Ayrshire Farm welcomed its first autumn baby on Sept. 15 – a Highland bull calf – and expects another 70 or so to arrive by mid-November. With new calves born every few days, it’s a full-time operation, but one that’s crucial to sustaining the future of these old-world animals and, eventually, ensuring a continuous supply of Certified Humane® and USDA Organic beef for the farm’s customers as well as its own restaurant, Hunter’s Head Tavern.
At Ayrshire, calving season comes twice a year: once in the fall and once in the spring, with seasons selected to cater to the needs of specific breeds. The farm’s Scottish Highland cattle – hardy, cold-weather-loving animals that have evolved over centuries to endure the rain and wind of their native homeland – give birth in autumn, while Ancient White Park are timed to calve in the spring. Fall offers heaps of nutrient-rich grasses, mild temperatures, and generally less muddy fields, a big plus when dealing with this long-haired breed.
Dividing the labor between two seasons also helps manage the workload for the people on the farm, too.
On a warm late-September day, large livestock manager Mike Estienne is driving around the perimeter of a pasture that’s thick with shin-high grasses, keeping out a well-trained eye for newborns. It’s a task that feels a bit like a high-stakes Easter egg hunt, scanning for any sign of shape or color that might reveal a tiny calf nestled among the vegetation.
During calving season, the farm crew makes these rounds several times each day to check in on dams and their offspring. With years of experience, they’re skilled at reading a cow’s body language. They can tell when a dam is about to give birth, if she’s in distress or needs intervention, and they can monitor signs in calves to make sure they are developing normally.
For the most part, Ayrshire’s cows are able to calve on their own. Often, a cow in labor will go off, find a nice spot and give birth quietly, without any help at all. Once the calves are born, they will be up, standing, nursing, and learning to walk within the first hours of life.
On this day, Estienne is searching for a calf that was born overnight. With tiny bodies and tall grasses to hide behind, it’s not always easy to spot these little ones. Finally, someone in a truck ahead spies the newborn and gestures back to Estienne. All is well.
The initial 48 hours of a calf’s life are very important, Estienne explains, so monitoring and caring for them as soon as possible is essential. First, the farm crew will locate and observe a new calf just after it’s been born. They’ll assign it an ID (more on that below) and snap a quick photo of it with the mother on an iPad. The photo is the first step in creating the calf’s database profile, which will be updated regularly throughout the coming days, allowing the farm to keep track of the calf and make sure it’s progressing normally. The farm crew also answers a series of questions about the calf’s general state at birth. Is the calf nursing? Is it healthy? Has it made a connection with its dam? With a few dozen babies to take care of, the database ensures everyone is accounted for and helps identify if any intervention is needed.
Later, the farm crew will return to catch a calf and lift it up into the back of a truck. Working as quickly and gently possible (with plenty of soothing nose rubs), they’ll give the calf a shot of vitamins, cut and dip the umbilical cord in iodine, measure its approximate size using a weight tape, and give it a little buzz cut around the butt – an extra courtesy reserved for the shaggy Highlands to keep youngsters clean. Next, the calf will get two ear tags: one equipped with tracking technology, and the other identifying the year and order in which the cow was born. In this case, the calf receives a tag saying “54N,” with “N” standing for the year it was born (2024), and “54” indicating it’s the 54th calf born this year.
After just a few days, this little calf will be running and playing with the other youngsters, as more and more babies join the herd. It’s the end of a process that began last winter, with the farm strategically introducing bulls to this select group of cows for breeding from mid-December to mid-February. Before too long, breeding will start again for next year’s fall calving herd.
In the weeks ahead, there will be challenges, long hours, and difficult births – but plenty of pay-offs, too.
“The rewards of calving are seeing healthy calves and healthy herds, and knowing you’ll have a steady supply of beef for our customers,” Estienne says before adding, “It’s also really cute.”
In many ways, it is magical the way these little bundles of new life slip into the world so quietly. When everything goes right, calving season is the perfect time to renew spirits and bolster enthusiasm for the future. Even though this season means extra work, there’s always room to appreciate these moments for what they are: new beginnings on the farm.
