Calving Season, Four Years In: What We Thought It Would Be… and What It Actually Is
If you had asked us a few years ago what calving season would look like, we probably would have pictured quiet mornings, fluffy calves in the grass, and mamas doing all the work while we stood back and watched.
That’s not what it looks like. Not here anyway.
Our First Calving Season — May 2025
Our first real introduction to calving season didn’t start with a calf hitting the ground. It started months earlier… with loss.
We had AI’d both Jade and Jane successfully, and they were due at the same time — mid May of 2025. We were expecting two calves, and we were excited, hopeful, and ready to finally see what we had been working toward.
And then in January, everything changed.
Jane lost her calf at about five and a half months.
Just like that, before we had even reached calving season, we learned something we hadn’t fully understood yet — this doesn’t always go the way you plan. There are no guarantees. By the time May came, we weren’t just excited anymore. We were watching more closely, holding our breath a little, hoping everything would go right.
And with Jade, it did.
She delivered HCA Rarbaert O’Hart — Rae — unassisted, right out in the field, sired by STR Encore.
That first season showed us both sides of it right away — how beautiful it can be, and how heartbreaking it can be, sometimes before it even really begins.
Planning This Year — April 2026
Going into April of 2026, we thought we were more prepared. We had a plan. We had intentionally lined up our calving window so everything would fall within about three weeks — first calf due around April 10, last one at the end of the month.
We also tried to AI the girls again. That was the goal. We successfully AI’d Jade, so she’s carrying a full sibling to Rae. But the rest of the girls… we tried, multiple times. What we learned quickly is that tipped cervixes versus straight cervixes matter a whole lot more than we realized. As newer breeders doing our own AI, we just didn’t have the experience yet to work through that.
A seasoned dairy or beef AI tech likely could have made it happen. We couldn’t.
So after multiple attempts, we made the decision to stop pushing it, and that’s where our bull stepped in.
Mad Dog Mattis of KM3 — a son of Howling Springs King Maker — got the job done for the other four girls. You can read more about our sires and how we structure our breeding program here.
It wasn’t what we originally planned, but it’s what needed to happen. We thought we had things lined up, but calving season reminded us again that we don’t control as much as we think we do.
A’ine — March 18th, 2026
Squires Farm Andromeda — Andi — was the first to prove that.
She calved 24 days early, on March 18th, 2026, with no warning and no slow lead-up. One of us was an hour away, the other was two hours away in the opposite direction, and it was actually our neighbor who noticed Andi’s tail was up and sent us pictures.
By the time Dave got home, the calf was already on the ground.
Andi had jumped a fence and gone into the wet woods to calve, and there was our tiny, premature calf — HCA A’ine Beannachd, weighing just 33 pounds. She was so small she almost just fell out.
That moment changed everything. We went from “we have time” to full emergency mode overnight.
A’ine needed everything — warmth, tube feeding, constant checks. We were learning hour by hour, researching in the middle of the night, reaching out to other breeders, and doing everything we could to give her a chance. We prayed over her constantly. It truly took a village to keep her going.
Because of her, we made changes immediately. Cameras went up. A camera in each stall. We were not going to be caught off guard like that again.
Sorley — April 5th, 2026
Then came Sorley, out of Maple, on April 5th, 2026 — 67 pounds.
By this point, we had already changed how we handled calving. Once the girls got close, they were no longer out in the field. They were in the barn, behind multiple gates and fences.
Maple did everything right leading up to it. She paced, got up and down, and showed all the normal signs. Her water broke, and about 15 minutes later she started pushing. She pushed for about 30 minutes — so we were about 45 minutes past water breaking.
We had watched the videos and knew what it should look like, but sitting there watching her, we were scared. We didn’t want to have to go in. We were afraid we would mess it up.
We kept hoping that when she stood up, we would finally see progress — a bag, feet, something.
But when she stood, there was nothing but a pool of blood.
That was the moment we knew we had to move.
When we went in to check his position, he was mis-aligned behind her cervix. We could feel his tongue gasping against our hand. That is something we will never forget.
He wasn’t coming on his own, so we stepped in. We repositioned him, praying the whole time — asking God to guide our hands — and then we pulled, hard and fast, because we had to.
And then he was out.
From there, it was a different kind of waiting. Watching him closely, making sure he was breathing, making sure we hadn’t been too late, and doing everything we could in those first twenty-four hours to give him the best possible chance.
Jami — April 10th, 2026… Learning When to Step In… and Step Back
By the time Squires Farm Captain Janeway — Jane — went into labor, we were different. We had already been through enough to know we weren’t going to wait as long.
Jane started in a stall, but when she got close to pushing, she became agitated and started prying at the gate with her horn so hard we were afraid she might hurt herself. So we moved her into our small pasture right off the barn where we could still control the situation.
She progressed, but not consistently. Her bag would show, then feet, then they would go back in. Feet in, feet out, over and over.
After about 30 minutes of that, we made the decision to step in. This time, it wasn’t hesitation — it was intentional.
We assisted her right there in the field, and HCA Jamison ‘Jami’ Beannachd was born. We set her down just long enough to clear her nose and mouth and make sure she was breathing, then picked her up and got her into the barn so that when she stood, she would be on even footing.
Jane followed back in easily, and within about 10 minutes they were reunited.
At that point, we hadn’t yet learned about stepping away to let them bond. What we knew was that Jane was upset and confused. So we stepped away anyway. We watched on the cameras instead of standing over her.
Within minutes, her instincts kicked in. She settled, and she accepted her baby.
All three of these mamas — Andi, Maple, and Jane — have allowed us to step in and help when it mattered. They have trusted us in those moments, even when they didn’t fully understand what was happening themselves, and that matters more than we can explain.
What This Season Is Teaching Us
This season has stretched us in ways we didn’t expect. It’s not just the physical work — it’s the mental weight of it, the responsibility, and the decisions that have to be made in real time.
There are moments where you realize there is no one else coming. It’s on you.
And in those moments, we have leaned hard into faith — praying for clarity, praying for strength, and praying that we’re doing the right thing.
We’ve learned when to act, when to wait, and maybe hardest of all, when to step back.
Where We Are Right Now
We still have two calves to go.
Mooni is our biggest unknown. Earning her trust has taken time, and we don’t know how she’ll handle everything when the time comes.
And then there’s Jade — Rae’s mama — who gave us a perfect, unassisted calving last year. We are praying for more of that.
At this point, we don’t care about color or whether it’s a heifer or a bull. We just want healthy calves and healthy mamas.
That’s it.
The Truth About Calving Season
Calving season isn’t what we thought it would be. It’s not predictable, it’s not always peaceful, and it’s not always easy.
It’s long nights, hard decisions, and moments that test you. It’s doing things you weren’t sure you could do… and doing them anyway.
And through all of it, we’ve found ourselves leaning on faith more than we expected.
Because at the end of it, when you see them out in the field — alive, nursing, growing — it makes every hard moment worth it.
If you want to follow along with the real, day-to-day version of this, we share it over on our Facebook page at Highland & Co. Acres.
Because this tells the story…
But the real version is still unfolding out in the pasture. 🧡
Want to learn more about the cattle behind these calves? Meet our full fold here, or read about the breeding program we’re building.
