It's bulls year for us here. 1/2 ratio of heifers and bulls so far. Herd bull's calves are hitting the ground now and from 10 his calves only 2 are heifers. We don't plan to keep many heifers, so it's better to have more bull calves.
Some of the recent calves:
Bull calf out of 2nd calver.
The mom of this one is quite bad tempered. She would be gone a long time ago, but even if she's quite bad tempered (not super bad, but better not touch her head, rear is fine though) you can always tag her calf, she has her calf every year unassisted, the calf nurses by himself, calves are actually well behaved and often pretty friendly and they grow really well. The cow is almost 8years old. She should stay for some more time. All her calves were bulls so far.
Heifer from another 8years old cow. Have a very nice red yearling heifer from the same breeding, which will be kept as replacement. If this one will be the same as the sister, she'll be a very nice one.
None of these were weighed, but should be in 90-115lbs range. Gestations are much longer of the herd bull's calves, often at 288-295days, so it takes quite a long time to have a new calf. Now have one at 289th day and she still waits... Others are close too.
Have already started AI for earlier calved cows. Have one being quiet after the first try with Parthenaise, one got charolais and one belgian blue. Have missed some heats from other cows to move them to abit later calving. Were ready to AI one, but she has injured herself during the heat and she started not holding her weight on her one rear leg and dragging it, so decided to wait and see if she'll be back to normal. She was good as new by the next evening.
Overall, a nice calving season. Haven't lost any newborns, only one fall born calf at 2.5months age. Had to assist a couple, but nothing too hard. Pretty high birth weights this year too, average at ~110lbs. Biggest calves sired by the herd bull, but very close were a couple calves from AI.