This week sees the beginning of the peak calving season in Ireland. While cows give birth every day of the year, over half of our 2 million calves land in the months of February, March, April and May.

On this page you will find Irish Farmers Journal videos that address the key animal husbandry issues at calving time.

For farmers, it is a busy time, a time of stress, but also a season full of hope and optimism. Each new birth brings new life and expectation. It is a season inevitably punctuated by days of disappointment, regret and annoyance at the ones that got away, the cold nose that never warms, the head that never shakes. No farmer likes losing a calf, yet it happens to even the best. “Where there’s livestock, there’s deadstock,” the wise neighbour will proclaim.

Technology such as calving cameras has reduced the strain of the calving season, but at its core it remains the same test of animal husbandry and competing with the power of Mother Nature. Young people raised on farms certainly benefit from early lessons in life and unexpected death.

We all remember nights where we set the alarm and marched forth hopefully with the lamp to check on progress. You’d curse the barking dog, but welcome his loyal company. After a tip toe across the crumpled straw, there was great joy in finding a wet newborn being licked clean.

Biestings, rich with blood, would stick to your fingers as you capitalised on the reflex action of the suck. Later that morning, the sight of a calf dancing around the straw was rich reward for your efforts.

In John McGahern’s novel “That they may face the rising sun”, there is a wonderful passage where the Leitrim author brilliantly describes the arrival of a new born calf.

“The old Shorthorn’s whole attention was fixed on her calf as if it was her first calf all over again, the beginning of the world.”

Best of luck with calving season 2014.