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- Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories, I'm Mark McDonald just North of Jacksonville at the Tomhave Cow-Calf Operation.

This is a crucial time of the year for a calving operation because in the case of the Tomhave farm here, or Tomhave farm here, they like to time the birth of their calves at this time of year, and then I think again in the fall.

We're gonna learn more about that how the timing is crucial but this worked out very well for them this year.

They had their calves in January and now as you can see, they're still very, very, very small.

They call them babies.

And the babies are with their mothers now.

And John Tomhave, this farm has been in your family for a long time.

- Correct.

- What are you, the fourth generation?

- I would be the fourth generation, yes.

- And your son and daughter-in-law work it with you.

- Yes.

- Okay.

And they have children.

- And they have children.

- So there may be a sixth on the way.

- Maybe a sixth generation.

- I mentioned the timing is crucial and we stand here, it's mid-February and it's cold, but this works for you, doesn't it?

- Yeah, actually we don't mind the cold.

The cold keeps things frozen hard and it gets you away from the mud.

And actually when we, dealing with mud and rain with calves is worse than the cold 'cause once they're born and the mothers get them cleaned off, big hair, you know, good, hairy calves.

They're good to go.

- [Mark] Yeah, I mean, they're made for the weather.

- [John] Yeah.

- [Mark] And we're looking at a little one here now.

Is that that's mother, is that her mother?

- [John] Yep, that's her mother.

That one was born, what's today, Monday?

A week ago Wednesday.

So it's about six, seven days old.

That's her first baby.

- [Mark] Really, her first?

- [John] Yeah.

- [Mark] How does she seem to be taken to motherhood?

- [John] Well, they do it naturally.

We try to pick the genetics and the type of cattle that do it on their own.

Sometimes you have to assist them and that's why we have to have a facility like this.

- Yeah, now how many babies do you have this time of year?

- This facility right here, we've got about 20 young ones so far.

In the next, oh, 45 days, they'll end up being between 80 and 100 right here and that'll be the majority of our spring herd at this facility.

Now they, we manage another facility north of here that will have about that many or more.

So probably by the end of the spring we'll have calved close to 160 to 180.

- Looks like we're getting some company here.

Now this is one of the moms, I guess.

- Yep.

- Does she have a young one?

- Yep, it's in the barn behind her there.

That's probably who she's talking to, but we like to leave him close to the facility for at least three or four weeks until we know the babies and the moms are gonna be okay and then they get turned out into different pastures.

- And they'll come in at night, most of them will come inside?

- That really cold weather will bring, we would have brought most of the young ones in, but like weather like last night, no, there, now we try to have little huts, these little barns that are out in these paddocks.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- Mostly only the calves can go in 'em and so we have gates across the front, so the cows can get in behind 'em to get a break from the wind, but the babies get to go in so they haven't the dry place to lay.

- So keep them out of the, they keep them out of the wind and you want them to be dry.

It's wet that they'd get in trouble.

- Yeah, wet's the problem.

I mean, they're made to handle the cold, is just getting wet.

- Look at these two young ones over here.

They kind of learned to take care of each other pretty quick, don't they?

- [John] Yep.

- [Mark] In fact the instinct is coming on him already, isn't it?

- [John] Yep, those are probably about a month old.

We started calving right around Christmastime and then calved most of January.

- [Mark] Do you ever run into a situation where mom doesn't take care of calf?

- Yeah.

They'll, occasionally young ones will not take a liking to it on the first day or two, but usually 99% of the time she'll take the calf.

The only problem we usually have is a feed.

Sometimes you have a set of twins.

She'll take one and not the other one.

Or we've got an orphan calf that we're treating later on here in the barn.

- [John] It's not that when there, is it?

- No.

It's another one in there, but she lost her mother at birth.

Her mother prolapsed in giving birth and the vet couldn't save her, so actually that mother right there, the 71 is helping nurse her.

She she's letting two calves nurse off of her, but we have to supplement it a little bit and we got to give it some other antibiotics and stuff to help it along.

- Okay.

Well maybe you let us see that process too where you're actually feeding and treating the animal.

So you've got about 20 babies here now.

- Yes.

- Okay.

And then you do this twice a year.

So you do that, you'll have another 20 what born in the summertime?

- [John] Well, no, in the next 30 or 40 days we'll have another 60 or 70 born here.

We're still in the process of it.

And we bring, we'll bring more females in that we have at other pastures and they wait in the pin out here to the north until they're ready to have calves and then they move into this facility and then as a calve, they get turned into here.

Once the calves are old enough that we haul them out and then we bring the next group in and you just kind of keep- - [Mark] Using, okay.

- Keep using it that way.

But with the automatic waters that you see there, they've got electricity in 'em, heaters in 'em so you don't have to worry about water freezing.

You do have to put out hay about every day and we're getting ready to put some out.

And that's been kind of tough too with the mud and the snow.

This winter has lasted about six months for us.

- But this is why you like it frozen because you don't have that much trouble getting around.

- Yeah.

- Okay, and you grow the hay yourself too.

That helps too, doesn't it?

- Yep, my son has a hay business and of course we do our own and then he does a lot for hire.

But yeah, we'll bale thousands of bales a year to try to take care of 'em.

And then we wrap 'em.

The white row sitting over there, that's a big plastic wrap that goes around the bales.

- [Mark] Sure enough.

- And so it keeps 'em dry, keeps 'em fresh.

So when you take it out of that wrap, it looks as good as the day you put it in there.

There's no spoilage in there so we're utilizing that technology to help with keeping the hay good, good quality hay.

- Part of the story too is this barn that's right behind us.

- Yes, sir.

- This barn was, this is as old as the farm, isn't it?

- We don't know exactly how old it is.

There is an etching on a board in there that says 1880.

We don't know if that's when it was built or that's when.

The family purchased the property in 1916 and my father knows obviously more of the history than I do, but it's been a mainstay for, you know, 100 and some odd years and it's still working good for us.

- Well, let's go inside and I think we're gonna talk to your dad about this- - Yeah.

- About this barn anyway, right, so let's go on inside.

- [John] Here ya go.

- Wayne, your whole life was spent in and around this barn, wasn't it?

- Yes, it was.

- And your grandpa, did your grandpa didn't build it, but he bought it in 1916 and you were just a little kid?

- Yeah.

Well, I was born in 40.

- Oh, okay.

Well, of course you weren't here in 1916, right.

But you remember as a little bitty kid knocking around this barn all the time.

- Oh yeah, yeah.

And Quinn and Charlie were the last two work horses they had and they were a gift from my mother's parents when they got married in '36.

And we've got a picture somewhere of them sitting on a wagoneer with Quinn and Charlie hooked up with 'em.

- Well, you know, people don't realize that work horses did all the work on a farm up until tractors were invented and that would have been, your grandpa would have needed horses, right?

- Oh yeah, yeah.

And there was two horse stalls here.

And see that divide there?

- [Mark] Yeah.

- I've got the divide down in my shed where I relocated at.

And there was two horse stalls here.

- [Mark] And this barn may have been built as late as, as long ago as 1888.

- You know, I think there's a date in the loft on that south wall, but I didn't get up there yet.

- But you, as a kid, you worked in here all the time.

In fact, he used to have the scoop oats, didn't ya?

- Yeah.

And my sister and I would bring our wagon down and they had a ham rail over in the crib and they ground bean meal and corn and put it in that site bin and oats in the first bin.

And we'd have to bring our wagon down here and haul oats up to the chickens.

- Is that right?

- Yeah.

- They kept chickens in here too?

Cows, horses and chickens?

- No, the chickens were in the chicken house.

- Okay, all right.

- Where his house is.

- That's where you had to haul the feed to.

- Right.

- Okay, all right.

And there was also feed stored up here, wasn't there?

Above in the loft.

- Yeah.

- And there's, of course, were those steps there then?

Is that how you got up there?

Or where did you just scramble up some other way?

- No, there was permanent steps here and there was a screen wire cover so the hens wouldn't get up their and lay eggs.

(Mark laughing) - Well, that's smart.

- Yeah.

And there was always baby kittens up there.

- [Mark] Baby kittens, of course.

- [Wayne] Yeah.

- And did you have cows too when you were a kid?

- No cows.

- [Mark] No cows, okay, not beef cattle like this.

- [Wayne] No.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Wayne] And they would feed, Dad would buy some calves and he'd feed them right out here and we'd get two bucks of ear corn and break 'em over the side of the bunk.

(Mark laughing) - And when you scooped oats, you had to climb up there and there's a shoot right here.

Was that your, was that where you, what you were aiming for?

- Mm-hmm.

And we scooped oats.

We'd back a wagon in there and scoop oats in that bin up there.

Grandpa always said if you didn't have a bucket or a shovel in your hand you were doing anything.

(Mark and Wayne laughing) - Grandpa was pretty smart, wasn't he?

- Yeah.

Well, we do everything with a bucket and shovel.

- Sure.

Still do, don't ya?

- Yeah, somewhat.

- Thanks, Wayne.

- But it's a lot simpler now.

- Yeah.

- Well.

- [Lauren] Gracie, ya wanna dump it in the bucket?

Good job.

- [Mark] Oh, good girl.

You've been on the farm a while, I can tell, huh?

Yeah.

- [Lauren] Yeah.

- Lauren, you're a partner in this cow-calf operation, right?

- Yes.

- You and your husband, Austin.

- Uh-huh.

- Oftentimes I think, you know, mothers don't always take care of the calves or they don't have enough milk or something happens to mom, so you end up having to do the mother duties, right?

- Bottle feeding, yep.

- Okay, does it happen very often?

- Oh, not very often.

One or two a year, you think?

Yep.

- [Mark] And it's what you have to do is just get them to this to the point to they're weaned and then they're okay, they can eat on their own solid food and everything.

- [Lauren] Actually they can, we start out with some starter here with them.

If they're having to be bottle fed, it just kind of gives them a little bit more and gets them going.

- [Mark] And the starter is the solid food that we just saw your daughter dump into there?

- Yep, that's Gracie's job.

- That's Gracie's job, okay.

Gracie's pretty good at it.

- Yes, Gracie likes to do the feed dumping and the hay.

- Why don't you show us what you need to do with this little fella here.

- All right, so this, we do this about one to two times a day depending on if another mom takes him or not.

And for this one, it needs a little bit more get up so we do some electrolytes in the morning in its milk.

And then at night it's just solid food replacer.

- [Mark] So this is not just milk, this is also has some chemicals added to it.

- [Lauren] Right, it's half electrolytes.

- [Mark] And how old is this calf?

- [Lauren] This one's three weeks old.

- [Mark] And will be weaned when?

- [Lauren] About six months old.

- [Mark] Oh really?

Okay, so you really have to do this for a long time.

Okay, six months.

But solid food and milk, right?

- [Lauren] Right, so as they get older they won't have to have as much of the milk, but also as they get used to it they'll even come up here to the gate and stick their face through there and that's when Gracie likes to to hold the bottle.

(Mark laughing) - [Mark] And Gracie, you can do that, you're big enough to hold that bottle?

It doesn't scare you, huh?

- [Lauren] Nope.

- [Mark] Yeah.

Oh no, it doesn't scare me.

- [Lauren] Doesn't scare her.

- [Mark] How many of these are you having to bottle feed?

- Right now just this one.

- [Mark] Just this one?

- Mm-hmm.

- [Mark] So that's a good year, that's a good crop, huh?

- Yeah, it is.

- [Mark] And you all, this is a interesting operation 'cause many of your moms are first time moms, aren't they?

- Right.

This, right now it is.

And we watch those ones a little bit closer.

- [Mark] Mm-hmm.

Well, yeah, because they don't really know what they're doing yet, do they?

- [Lauren] Right, first-time moms.

- [Mark] I guess they don't produce quite as much milk as an older one too, huh?

- [Lauren] Correct.

- [Mark] Well, did you ever think, did you think that you would be in a cow-calf operation when you were a kid?

Did you think that this was something you really wanted to do?

- Absolutely not.

- [Mark] No.

And with your kids here too.

- Exactly, it's a lot of fun though.

- [Mark] You and Austin have two daughters.

- Yes, we do.

And our oldest one right now is really involved.

She likes to come out here.

She even has her own little scooper.

She comes and cleans pens out with us.

- [Mark] Is that right?

- She's in charge of dumping the feed and making sure the gates stay closed.

- [Mark] Looks like she's doing a pretty good job right now.

(Lauren laughing) - Well, thanks for talking to us, appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- Austin, we were talking to your grandpa.

He said as long as he can remember, he's been working, he's been working in this barn.

That's pretty true for you, isn't it too?

- It's the same, yeah.

(Mark laughing) - Well, it feels pretty comforting, doesn't it, to know that you and your dad and your kids and you, you all sort of have the same life experience.

That's kind of cool.

- It is, it's very humbling, I guess you could say.

- Yeah.

We are in a specific place.

I think this is called, is this the calving?

- Calving pen is what I call it.

- [Mark] Okay, now we're not calving, nobody's calving today, but.

- [Austin] No.

- [Mark] During a couple of weeks ago when you were bringing in calves, there's a real specific way these pens are set up so that you can make that happen, right?

- [Austin] Correct.

- [Mark] Describe it to us.

- [Austin] Okay, so basically all this a, it's a revised working shoot.

It's just made worker-friendly so you can work 'em basically by yourself and be able to get a cow in and be able to keep her from being really get to you and you can help her out.

- [Mark] And how do you know?

This might be a stupid question.

How do you know when she's ready to calve?

I mean, is it pretty obvious?

- Yeah, usually there'll be a, usually whenever we find them and they think he might need help, there's usually some kind of water sack or something hanging out the back of 'em.

That's the best, or there's feet sticking out.

- Oh, so she's already started.

- Right, usually, but usually, especially with the first calf heifer, she has that water sack out for few hours.

We're getting her in this pen just to kind of make sure everything's going right and we'll just, rather be safe than sorry, I guess you could say.

- Now, oftentimes they don't need your help, I guess, they'll just calve on their own?

- That's the plan, that's the plan.

- [Mark] And so you wouldn't need this pen.

They just out there, they'd lay down in the hay.

They had their calf and they're licking it off and they're good with it, huh?

- [Austin] Yeah, I would much rather have calves outside in the sun and have them inside in the barn.

There's so many more things that could potentially go wrong whenever you have them in a small confined area.

But whenever it's the best option for the cow and the calf coming, it's just something that you have to do.

- [Mark] We're looking at a little calf right now.

How old is this one we're looking at?

- [Austin] Oh, it's probably about three weeks old.

- [Mark] And no problems with that.

That was perfectly healthy, I guess?

- [Austin] Yep, up and going, running around.

- [Mark] Okay, now we got mom, this isn't mom, but a potential mom here, let's assume that she's getting ready to calf and she needs your help.

You already got her pinned to where her head is already sort of locked out there, right?

- [Austin] Yep, yep.

So basically now there's a, you can pin that over and that'll keep that from coming out and that'll keep her from moving side to side.

So whenever we're helping her out and feeling inside of her that way she can't lay over, break your arm.

It keeps her from moving around, smashing somebody.

- [Mark] Safer for you.

- [Austin] Yep.

- [Mark] Now, if you're really having a difficult time, you've got certain tools that you may need to use.

What are those?

- This here is what you call, are the pulling chains.

So here we'll just make it happen.

So basically, if this calf was coming, if it's coming right, the front legs will be sticking straight back.

So it'd be coming out and its nose would be right there.

- [Mark] Okay.

- [Austin] So usually the first thing you see is these feet.

And so you can take these chains and you just make loops out of them like that.

And so whenever I go to put them on, whenever I'm reaching inside of her, I can put that over my wrist and you can kind of reach and it'll fall down over that ankle and you can just pull it tight.

And so you do that to each leg and you want to get it behind this, I guess you'd say their joint 'cause it won't harm them as much.

If you get it down here too low, you can harm their hoof.

So you can do that.

- [Mark] And if she's having trouble, that helps you pull, actually pull the calf out.

- [Austin] Exactly.

So then we can, I forgot to grab it, but there's another hook you can just hook onto here.

And if it's not a hard pull, you can just pull it out by hand that way.

We've had some, like me and my brother pulled one the other day, it was actually coming backwards.

- [Mark] Uh-oh.

- [Austin] And so that would be the back feet.

And we could kinda see her out here.

She was outside having the calf and we could tell something was up 'cause the back feet when they're hanging out look different than the front feet.

- [Mark] Oh man, was she okay?

- Yeah, it ended up being fine, but it just pulls a lot different 'cause the hips come out.

The hips come out, they're a lot bigger right here.

So the calf made it, it kind of makes a V whenever it's supposed to come out head first so it's hard to get these hips out first and that's why she was having a problem then.

- And what about these, are these here- - [Austin] That's for more extreme situations whenever you can't get it out by hand.

- [Mark] Oh man, that must be really hard to- - That fits back on the cow.

It's just a lot safer though this way because how this fits up behind the cow, it'll keep pressure against the cow then rather than just pulling everything.

So you're not pulling on necessarily her neck and everything now, you're actually pulling against her body so it kinda holds her.

It's a lot safer and a lot more- - Do you ever lose a cow during birthing?

- Well, the calf that we were looking at earlier that's what happened.

We didn't even have to pull the cow, but the cow actually prolapsed.

- Oh, wow.

- And it was just one of those things that you couldn't do anything about.

We did everything we could.

We had an vet here and yeah, it's just one of those things.

- It just happens.

- Yeah.

- It just happens.

Wow, well this is really hard work when you're calving, isn't it?

I mean, sometimes you never know how many, when you're gonna be needed or how often you're gonna be needed, right?

- That's right and we keep everything here close.

We can drive up and down the road, be able to look and keep a closer eye on 'em.

We can keep 'em inside here, especially at night.

It's easier to keep an eye on 'em whenever we can just light the whole place up.

You can walk in here and go through them and see if anybody's having problems and stuff like that.

- Well, thanks.

I guess you're not calving anymore for a while, huh?

- Oh no.

There's about 30 of 'em out here.

- Is that right?

That are pregnant?

- They're just any day now.

- No kidding, wow, okay.

Well maybe we'll get lucky, maybe today.

(Mark laughing) - It's usually in the middle of the night, so you might just stay for a while.

- Sure it is.

Well, Sherri, I guess you do this just about every day, don't ya?

- Somebody has to do that almost every single day.

(Mark laughing) - [Mark] Nothing new for you.

You were a farm girl.

You grew up a farm girl and then you met John in college at the U of I.

You both got degrees in animal science.

- [Sherri] Yes.

- [Mark] And now here you are on the farm again.

- Here we are on the farm.

This is where we'd love to be.

We wanna raise our family.

There's no better place than to raise our children, our grandchildren.

We've got, you've already met Wayne and Wayne and Karen, so grandparents are all here.

This is a family farm for sure.

And we're all involved in agriculture.

We have another son who's working up north on a goat farm and he's there.

And we have a daughter who's gonna graduate from University of Illinois in May.

- No kidding.

- Yes.

- Is she animal sciences too?

- She actually will have a minor in animal science and her degree will be in ag leadership education, so she's out there wanting to promote and support, do marketing and work in all kinds of, once again, promoting agriculture to, so that, not just, you know, you just can't promote it to the farmers, you gotta promote it to the general public.

- [Mark] Yeah, you may not get her back on the farm though.

It sounds like she wants to do something else.

- Well, I don't know.

Well, the other thing we're always, we're involved with around here, we're all involved in crop insurance.

I work for Farm Credit Illinois and I do crop insurance there and Austin actually works for one of the crop insurance companies and he's an adjuster.

And actually Abby has some interest in that too, so.

- Well, you gotta stay busy, right?

- We have to stay busy and that's, I think that's the way of the farm.

I think somebody is always, there's a lot of multitasking.

- There's always so many things to do, yeah.

- These cows keep us busy all the time, year round, but it's the best thing.

It is the best thing.

The best thing is when the sun comes out, it's a little, get a little warmer out there and those baby calves will run with those tails in the air like you wouldn't believe and it makes everything worth it.

Everything worth it.

Well, thank you.

- Thank you.

- Well, Wayne, this is a little different, a little more modern than the barn that we saw you in just a little bit earlier that you used to work with with your grandpa, but you still like your old tractors and your old stuff, even though it's a new building, right?

- Right.

(Mark laughing) Dad had a tractor like that, - Like this farm all over here.

- [Wayne] Uh-huh, the MTA.

- [Mark] Well, didn't have one like this too?

- Yeah.

- Yeah, but these are restored.

These are tractors that you bought since then, right?

- [Wayne] Yes.

- Yeah, but you like 'em cause they're like your dad's tractors, okay.

You were telling us about the old barn and how much some of it was taken out and these were the original dividers from the barn when it was a horse, and this was the horse barn part, right?

- [Wayne] Right.

- And you got a lot of the old tools too, didn't ya?

Look at all this stuff.

This all came out of the old barn.

- [Wayne] Uh-huh.

It was hanging along in the hall.

- [Mark] Yeah.

You used a lot of these tools I'll bet.

- Grandpa was kind of a blacksmith too.

That's his blacksmith tools.

- Oh, he used, oh, I see, he used that in smithin', okay.

He probably made some tools too, didn't he?

I'll bet he made some of those tools.

- Yeah, that thing there.

- [Mark] And these are more pictures of you.

I love that one with you and the horses up there on the right.

You're just a little, just a little kid there.

- [Wayne] Yeah.

- [Mark] Okay, that was with grandpa, right?

- [Wayne] Uh-huh.

(Mark laughing) Well, this is kind of neat 'cause you've got your own little museum here.

- [Wayne] Yep.

- [Mark] Got the yoke from the old horses.

Everything that you'd need to keep up.

- [Wayne] This was the way a horse was harnessed.

That was a single tree.

And this went across his back.

- Mm-hmm.

And you were, you were too little weren't you then to do any harnessing, or did you actually do it?

- No, I didn't do any harnessing.

- [Mark] You were too little.

- Yeah.

- By the time you were big enough, there were tractors.

- We've got a picture of three tractors parked in front of a barn down there that he had a 48 WD and a 35 F 20, which was an International, and a C and they were all early tractors.

- Like this one over here.

Wasn't this one, this was your tractor, wasn't it?

- [Wayne] Yes.

- Look at those kids.

(Mark laughing) Well, Wayne, I think they would enjoy your tractor as well, just like you did, huh?

- I got a buddy seat on that.

Karen said I had to haul grandkids in the buddy seat.

- [Mark] It's a buddy seat.

Do you do take these in parades, don't ya?

- Yeah.

And I had this one Prairie Land at the Steam Show.

- [Mark] Oh, I love that show.

- Yeah.

- [Mark] Yeah.

- I remember it.

- [Mark] Are you gonna go again this year?

- I plan to and I give tractor rides to that Friday.

- [Mark] We're thinking about doing another program 'cause I think it's the 50th anniversary this year.

- Yes it is.

- [Mark] Yeah.

And that's the steam, what do they call it, the Heritage Steam Show, Prairie Land?

- Prairie Land Heritage, yeah.

- Yeah.

Look at those kids.

Aren't they having a time?

Well, this is of course, as you can see, it's a generational concept here.

Four generations are in this barn right now and they're not gonna stay here long though because they have 30 pregnant cows running up the road and calving season is underway.

With another Illinois Story in Jacksonville, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

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