Calving in Sync with Nature: How One South Dakota Ranch Rebuilt Its System
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Calving in Sync with Nature: What Changed
On a Western South Dakota Ranch Riley Kammerer, his wife Jimmie, and their daughters Karlie, Katelyn, and Kymbal, ranch near Piedmont, South Dakota, where spring does not politely arrive on the calendar. It fights its way in — sometimes through blizzards that drop feet of snow well into April.
The Kammerers are a multigenerational ranching family running roughly 400 cow–calf pairs in western South Dakota. Their operation isn’t small, and it isn’t theoretical. It’s real cattle, real grass, real weather, and real risk.
A short reel we posted recently — South Dakota Ranch Riley talking about “calving in sync with nature” — crossed 100,000 views in a matter of days. Hundreds of likes. Dozens of comments. Shares across state lines. For a 20-second clip filmed on a ranch yard, that kind of response surprised us.
What surprised me even more was the tone.
Most of the comments were supportive. Some were cautious. A few pushed back on the
economics. Ranchers from Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Montana raised thoughtful questions about milk production, breeding in cooler weather, fall market timing, and whether later calving is truly the most economical system.
In other words: serious producers engaging seriously.
That felt less like controversy and more like an opportunity — an invitation to slow down and look more closely at what actually changed on this ranch and why.
“Calves Aren’t Born with a Winter Hair Coat”
When I spoke with Riley this week, it was five degrees with a stiff thirty-mile-an-hour wind.
“I’m glad I’m not calving today,” he said.
That sentence carries weight in western South Dakota.
The Kammerers used to calve in what many would call winter, late February through early April. Some of their worst losses came from blizzards that arrived right up until the tenth of April. Frozen calves. Long nights. Stress stacked on stress.
At some point, Riley says, the paradigm shifted.
“Calves aren’t born with a winter hair coat.” It’s a simple biological truth. And yet much of our management in agriculture involves trying to outmuscle it.
By moving the bulk of their calving into May — with only a few early calves trickling in by late
April — the Kammerers shifted their exposure to weather risk. That doesn’t mean it would make sense everywhere. A rancher in Oklahoma or Pennsylvania is managing a different climate and a different risk profile. Even ranchers 100 miles north of Piedmont may face different conditions.
Context matters.
But for this particular ranch, in this particular place, the weather risk alone was reason enough to reconsider tradition.
Moving the Production Cycle
The deeper shift wasn’t just the date on the calendar.
It was the production cycle itself.
Instead of trying to hold cows at a body condition score of five or better through February on
harvested hay, the Kammerers restructured their system so cows spend winter in their second trimester grazing stockpiled pasture — forage that hasn’t been grazed or disturbed for 10 to 12 months. By the time those cows enter their third trimester, they’ve already been on green grass for weeks.
“We can put 150 pounds on a cow fast,” Riley told me. “By the first of May, they’re in a body
condition score of six — with no feed.”
That statement challenges a lot of assumptions.
Later calving, in their system, aligns peak nutritional demand with peak forage quality. It reduces hay. It reduces supplement. It reduces stress.
And for a 400-head operation, labor matters. Winter calving in this region takes a crew. It takes tractors. It takes diesel. It takes barns. It takes nights in bitter wind.
The Kammerers decided they didn’t want to build their business around that model anymore.
Cutting Hay as an Enterprise
One of the most significant changes wasn’t about calves at all. It was about hay.
“We cut that enterprise out of our business,” Riley said.
At one time, feeding costs were running around $3 per day per cow — roughly $1,000 per day for their herd. Today, through year-round grazing, stockpiled forage, and full-season cover crops (we're creating a separate post on this subject), feeding costs are closer to $1 per day per cow. Hay is reserved primarily for severe weather events.
That shift eliminated not just feed bills, but much of the associated capital and labor: fewer
tractors, less diesel, no calving barn, no large-scale haying operation.
Could they run more cows by adding a massive haying enterprise? Possibly. “But we’ve been there before,” Riley said. “We ran ourselves ragged. We’re not willing to do that anymore.”
That’s not laziness. That’s clarity.
More Than a Calendar Change
During our follow-up conversation, Jimmie offered a perspective that deepened the entire
discussion.
“So the biggest aspect of all of this is people don’t see what our goals are,” she said. “Our goal for our business is to not degrade our resources. And those resources include the land. They include our financial situation, they include our labor, and they include our family.”
That sentence deserves to be read slowly.
“Ranchers are hard workers,” she continued. “We can work hard, and we do the work. But at
what cost? There’s a mental health crisis in agriculture. The average age of farmers and ranchers keeps climbing. Young people don’t want to return to this field. Why are we having these crises? That goes back to our goal of not degrading our resources.”
For the Kammerers, moving their calving date wasn’t just about weather. It wasn’t just about
weaning weights or market timing. It was about aligning their production system with their goals.
Land. Finances. Labor. Family.
All four count.
An Invitation to Think in Systems
None of this suggests that later calving is universally superior.
Several commenters rightly pointed out tradeoffs — lighter calves at certain sale windows,
regional differences, breeding considerations. Those questions deserve thoughtful answers, and we’ll continue exploring them in future conversations.
But what this moment revealed is something encouraging: ranchers are thinking in systems.
They’re asking not just, “What have we always done?” but, “What fits our land, our climate, and our family?”
For the Kammerers near Piedmont, South Dakota, calving in sync with nature has meant fewer frozen calves, lower feed costs, reduced capital outlay, healthier cows, and a more sustainable rhythm of life.
That may not be everyone’s system.
But it is theirs.
And if a short video about that can spark a thoughtful national discussion, perhaps that’s not
controversy at all.
Perhaps that’s education.
If you’re evaluating your own calving window, explore the South Dakota Grassland Coalition’s
Calving Considerations resources to weigh the tradeoffs in your context.
Visit these “Growing Resilience Through Our Soils” information pages:
1. Podcast page for drought planning fact sheets, Q&As, news, podcasts, and more.
2. Video page to watch videos of other ranchers’ journeys toward improved rangeland/pasture.
3. Follow Growing Resilience on social media:
4. Our homepage: www.growingresiliencesd.com