The spring season in the world of admissions means traveling, recruiting, and gearing up for enrolling students, but in the world of farmers who  own cattle, it means gearing up for calving season. When I’m not on the road recruiting future Panthers or hosting campus visits in late February, March, and April, you can find me on our family’s farm assisting my husband with our cows. Together, we raise beef cattle in a cow-calf operation, meaning we raise mother cows and their babies. Each spring, all of our cows give birth to their calves. During this time, we are making several trips to the barn to do “calf-checks” at all hours of the day and night to ensure everything is progressing as it should. Most cows deliver their calves without any help from us. But sometimes, something isn’t positioned right, or something else is going wrong, and we need to step in. If this happens, we can take several measures to help pull the calf out. Sometimes this is just grabbing a leg and pulling. Other times, we have to pull out a tool called “calving chains,” which we attach to the calf’s legs to give us more leverage to pull them out.

When a calf is born, we want the mom to clean it off, and we want to see the calf get up and drink milk. The first milk that comes from a cow is called colostrum and is very rich in important nutrients for the calf. Once we know the cow and calf are okay, we will process the calf. This includes adding an ear tag to its ear and, if it is a bull (male) calf, castrating it. A female calf is called a heifer calf. We typically keep some of our heifer calves every year to grow our herd. When a bull calf has been castrated, we refer to it as a steer. We leave all our calves with their moms for several months, then move them out to the pasture in the summer so they can all feast on grass. Then, in the fall, we will wean the calves from their moms, and they will no longer drink milk. We will sell our steers to another farmer the following spring so they can continue raising them, and our heifers will remain part of our herd to have their own calves.

Calving season reminds me a lot of spring in admissions. Much like farmers checking the barn at all hours, admissions counselors spend this season checking in on students, answering questions, and stepping in when things don’t go as planned. Sometimes students move forward on their own, and sometimes they need a little extra support to get across the finish line. In both worlds, the work is hands-on, unpredictable, and deeply rewarding. Whether it’s welcoming a new calf to the herd or a new student onto campus, spring is a season of growth.