Echo Valley Family Farm

05/11/2026

Mornings on the farm ❤️

03/28/2026

Meet Sadie - our newest addition. She is a registered genome tested A2A2 from Ohio.

03/07/2026

Forest is walking better today. He’s 2 days old.

01/25/2026

Coldest day of the year… First lamb of the year

11/02/2025

Rainy mornings on the farm.

10/29/2025

One of the biggest lessons I’ve learned raising calves is this: stress stacks.

And when it stacks too close together, you start paying for it — in health, growth, and time.

Every stress event — moving pens, vaccinating, dehorning, weaning, hauling, weather changes — hits their system like a wave. Cortisol spikes, appetite drops, the immune system slows down, and energy gets rerouted from growth to just surviving the moment.

That’s why I go by what I call the “at least 72-hour rule.”

When a calf goes through one major stress event, I like to give them at least three full days before another.

Because here’s the thing — their body needs that time to reset.

Cortisol doesn’t drop overnight.
White blood cells don’t bounce back instantly.
And their gut and rumen need time to re-stabilize.

Stack stress too close together, and you’ll see it — calves that don’t bounce back, slower grain intake, off-and-on scours, weak vaccine response, or a pneumonia case that “came out of nowhere.” (Except it didn’t. You just didn’t give them time to recover.)

Think about it this way: if you ran a marathon and someone immediately signed you up for another, how well would that go? Even the healthiest calves need recovery time between marathons.

So, don’t cram it all in at once.
Don’t dehorn and vaccinate the same day just to “get it done.”
Don’t move pens right after a cold snap or hot day.
Give them those 72 hours — and if they’re weak or just went through a big stress event, give them more.

Those quiet recovery days are when their bodies rebuild. That’s when you’re actually setting them up to handle the next stress better.

Because timing matters just as much as technique.

And those three days might be the difference between a calf that gets by… and a calf that thrives.

10/19/2025

I don’t think he’s going to lay any eggs this morning, but he sure is cute in the nesting box on this rainy morning. 

10/11/2025

08/15/2025

We have piglets!!!

06/29/2025

Friends on the farm ❤️