Calving is starting to pick up.  So is the winter weather.  They tend to go hand in hand.  Weather fronts  have quite an affect on animals. A low front IE; bad weather coming in, nature tells them to eat more.  This allows them to have extra energy reserves during the weather event.  The pressure changes also affect labor and delivery.
Our very warm weather has gone and with the snow pack, it will be some time before it returns.  We have had a few calves in the last few days.  As, I stated before, we are calving less heifers this year.  However, it takes just as much time to calve less  as it does when we do 2x this number.
We have had to assist (pull) 2 calves and take one heifer into town for a vet assisted delivery ( c section or what we call a zipper).  We do all our own vet work, except for zippers and prolapses. We have a little joke going with the vets.  They usually don't see any of our livestock unless it is going to die, (we have already done every thing they would have done) so they have a 100 % record.  This is the firsts year we have had to do a zipper.

My husband had to do all the calving and feeding by himself the last 2 days as I got a mini vacation.  I got to make a quick trip to Ft. Pierre, SD to pick up a load of 4 weight (wt) steers (400-499 pound). I enjoy these trucking trips.  I usually go up one day and stay with family. I load out early the next morning and come back home.  It is 6 hours each way, so just a nice trip.  Lots of time to think, pray, talk on the phone with friends, and reflect life itself.
I like the Ft. Pierre/ Pierre area.  It is big country.  The ranches are large, the pastures and wheat fields are large.  It reminds me of a ranch I used to be on many, many, years ago.  It was 24,000 acres total.  Pastures were around 6,000 acres.  In some parts of the state, towns were 8 to 10 miles apart.  On this ranch, from the house and barns to the south corrals it was 8 miles away.  There were some pastures that you had to ride by land marks to keep your bearings straight to get home again.  There were also mud bogs in several places.  You had to trust the sense of the cattle and horses.  The bogs would look like a dried up mud puddle. If the cattle  or horses didn't want to cross, we were NOT to force them.  They would trail along side and eventually cross.  It may have seemed a pain to go so far out of the way, but if you ever saw anything in a bog, you would understand the extra work.   It was rumored that General Custer bogged down his wagons in one of the pastures.
There was a river that ran through this ranch that had rock bluffs.  There was a lot of history there.  The circuit rider preachers left carvings on those bluffs.  A circuit rider preacher had a route and performed duties when  he would get back around to each settlement. This ranch was 45 miles from the closest town.  I would go in once every 2 weeks for groceries.  Neighbors would call each other if someone was going in and ask if anything was needed.  This may sound like desolation to some people, but I found it to be more social that most metro areas. You know all your neighbors and take care of each other.
It was oil country and you could hear the "heart beat" thump thump of the wells pumping, esp on quiet summer evenings.  Since it was oil, and rattle snake country, on the advice of the ranch owners wife I carried a water jug and gun in my pickup when traveling.  If you had vehicle trouble, you could set for quite a while.  It was no guarantee who would come to your rescue first.  My how times have changed.  Now with cell phones, AAA, etc.  Fortunately the only time I had to use my gun was on snakes.  We were to kill all rattlers, cut their heads off and bury it so no animal would get poisoned by the venom left in the fangs.  The snakes were to be hung over the fences to "bring rain".  Some of the snakes I killed were so large they would almost touch the ground on both sides of a 4 strand  barb wire fence.  There were so many snakes and they would come up on our front concrete slab of the house.  It made me very nervous for our 2 yr old daughter to play outside.  Even with the snakes, living there was one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.  I am sure I will end up writing more about this place.