Calving Records: The Foundation of Every Good Herd Record
Start your 14-day free trialEverything else in your herd records starts with calving. Which cows raise a calf every year, which bulls throw big calves, which heifers to keep, what to sell: none of it works if the calving record isn't right.
Ranchers keep that record a lot of ways. A calving book in the pickup. A note on their phone. A text to themselves at 2 a.m. so they don't forget which cow. A spreadsheet at the kitchen table, or software they've used for years. Any of those works fine the day you write it down. The trouble comes later, when you need to pull it back out.
A calving record is only worth keeping if you can find it again, and if it's right when you sit down to decide which cows stay and which go.
What a calving record should hold
At the least, a calving record needs the cow (the dam) and the date. That is a calving. Past that, the records that pay you back are:
- Calf sex and color
- Birth weight
- Calving ease, so you know which cows and which bulls cause pulls
- Twins, and calves that were born dead
- The sire, so you can judge bulls by what their calves do
If you only get the dam and the date down in the middle of a snowstorm, that still counts. You can fill in the rest later.
How Herd Advisor handles calving
Herd Advisor lets you add as much or as little as you want. A dam and a birth date alone is a calving. Or record the whole story: birth weight, calving ease from 1 to 5, sex, color, and twins (up to 10 calves on one calving). A calf that is stillborn or dies at birth still gets a record.
If you do not tag calves at birth, you do not have to. Record the calving and the app gives the calf a temporary tag like CALF-52-20261028, built from the dam's tag and the birth date. When you tag the calf later, you match it up. Calves still waiting on a tag show up in one list, by year and sex, and you tap one to give it a tag, sex and sire.
The sire fills in on its own from the bulls she was with. If you move a bull in with the cows, Herd Advisor opens an exposure window for each cow; with two or more bulls in, each calf lists the bulls that could have sired it.
Seeing it before calving starts
Herd Advisor shows which cows are due in the next 30 days and which are overdue, with a tile on your dashboard. Calving shows up as a reminder that comes from your breeding records and bull exposure, so you do not set it by hand.
When the season is under way, the Current Calves report compares this year's calves with the last five years: when they came by month, birth and weaning weights, average daily gain, how many you lost, and the steer and heifer split. It also lists any calf with no dam on record, and you can fix that right there.
Entering a calving with your gloves on
On an iPhone you can say "Hey Siri, cattle record with Herd Advisor," wait for Siri to say "Go ahead for Herd Advisor," then say the record the way you would tell a neighbor: "Cow 777 had a heifer calf, tagged 266." You review and confirm it later. On Android, use the voice button inside the app. It works offline on the phone and syncs when you get signal. For the full walk-through, read How to keep a digital calving book.
Frequently asked questions
Can I record twins?
Yes. Up to 10 calves can go on one calving.
What if I did not tag the calf?
Record the calving anyway. The calf gets a temporary tag from the dam's tag and the birth date, and you swap in the real tag later.
Can I print or export my calving book?
You can build a calving list with columns such as Preg Check, Due Date, Last Calf, Dam and Sire, and export any list or report to Excel or CSV.
Does it work with no cell signal?
On the phone, yes. It syncs when you are back in range.