Send Them On

Well, after a tired night’s sleep, I didn’t wake up feeling as bad as when I went to bed! I could hardly walk last night, so waking up mobile was an improvement. Don’t get me wrong, I was plenty happy to stay home and recuperate. They had just a long a day today as yesterday too.

So for those of you new to the blog, this land is a Bureau of Land Management allotment. We run our cattle out here along with a couple other ranchers. There are three pastures out here and we rotate through them according to a schedule from the BLM. If one area has no water or grass, they can modify that schedule for the health of the rangeland. The BLM tells us when we can go out and when we have to come back in. Our end date is June 20. This is considered public land, so hunters, campers, etc. can access this property. We do pay for the lease of this land through AUMs or Animal Units Monthly. That is the amount that a cow and her calf can eat in a month. Wyoming has 46.7% of its land under Federal ownership.

We ride, gathering cows according to which way the cows need to go, trying to keep from doubling back since cows get tired and hot, too! We have two different directions we need to go, so it takes a bit more organization when we sort.

We gather by spreading a net of riders along the landscape and pushing them to some designated “sorting ground” where we can pair mother cows and calves in the direction they need to go. We’ve trailed our cattle to my favorite sorting ground where we will pair them and send them on to graze on some of our private land.

I mean, really, I just have to stop every little bit and look and count my blessings even if some old cow can’t seem to find her calf ten feet away!

Today Victoria took a quintessential photo of range doctoring during gathering. This one is magazine worthy!

She did well, didn’t she?

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