Somewhere in my teenagedom, I don’t know exactly what year, there came a rude awakening that I had done Christmas wrong.

I hope this article finds you and your family doing well. This time last year, none of us could have foreseen 2020 unfolding the way it has. We have all been negatively impacted by COVID-19 in at least one significant way.

Regardless of how prepared we are, the first calf of the season often seems to come as a surprise. The following is a list of considerations to help make sure you, your cows and the barn are ready to go.

No matter if you’ve been in the business one year or 20 years, you always seem to find improvements you can make to your working facilities. Well-constructed facilities should reduce stressful situations for both cattle and handlers.

As the year comes to an end, it is a good time to look back and evaluate how the operation did and what things can be improved on moving forward to increase profit potential and reduce risk.

A business cannot achieve its full potential without establishing a level of structure that provides clarity for each person’s areas of responsibility, standard procedures for tasks, levels and limits of authority for each family member and employee, and an agreement on how people will be held accountable.