Wednesday was an All Hands On Deck kind of day.
We were gathering our allotment to bring in the last of the cows, and since there are five ranches that share that allotment, we had quite the crew! Of course, everyone had to feed what livestock they already have at home, we’ve been letting those cows that voluntarily came to the fenceline on into the fields for the past week or so, so we didn’t have an early start…
By 8 I was at the barn and soon we were trailering out to the far side of the pasture. Vernon was kind enough to take the tractor out and plow out the drifts from the road, or we never would have got the pickups and horsetrailers out there!
I stayed close to the road as other cowboys had already hit the creek bottoms and were pushing up bunches towards me.
I just kept the bunches moving. Soon more showed up…
Another hill and they stopped. We cut our little bunch out and sent the rest over the hill towards their home. They actually belong to two other places, but they’ll sort out farther along the trail. Daniel and Brandon left with them, continuing the search for any more of ours in the bottom of North Buffalo Creek.
It’s easy to spot a line of black cattle in the wintertime in Wyoming… Dally and I kept our little bunch of 18 headed for home, meandering and waiting for the boys to show up, and visiting with a neighbor. Finally, I decided to just go on home with them and found 6 more in the next pasture over along with some neighbors! He dug them out of the creek bottom on his four wheeler and I cut ours out and shoved them through the gate.
Right about then the boys and neighbors showed up with pickups and horsetrailers and since these cows know where they were going, I jumped my horse in the trailer and rode the last mile and a half in the pickup!
It was a gorgeous day, started out at 9˚ and rose to 30˚… sunshine and NO WIND… I was MUCH warmer than expected! Gotta love days like that!
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Dally today: “How am I doin’ Mom?”
I loved the pictures today, and the play by play!
Great teamwork. Nice job.
Maybe you already have all of you Q&A’s but if so here’s one for the future. How far can you walk cattle in one day?? I’m sure there is a distance where they just get tuckered out if you go too far.