I decided I’d better break this post down to two parts… For the more squeamish… skip tomorrow’s post… I’ll give more details then. For now… Welcome to A. I. School! We’ve AI’d for quite a few years now… but only on our first calf heifers. We have the opportunity to get good Angus semen for…
Category: Animals
Branded in Sepia
I can’t help myself… whenever it is branding time, I have to switch my camera over to sepia mode. J. and J. share a story as Victoria swings a loop. I could do it as an effect on my Iphoto program… but for me, I like the real thing. I enjoy opening these up and…
Branded
Finally, it is here and gone again. Friends have arrived to help and enjoy the “fun” of branding day. Old cedar fenceposts reappear sawed to length and split for the fires. Boy, if you could only smell it… go stick your head in your grandmother’s keepsake trunk, and that’s the smell of these cedar sticks…
Preparation
Preparations for branding tomorrow have hit their full stride. The shop is cleaned and ready for weary, hungry workers. The firewood is chopped ready for the branding fire. The pop is chilled and water jugs filled for thirsty cowboys. All vaccinations, paint sticks, sorting sticks, brands, needles, syringes, LA200, sulfa pills, lost eartag replacements, camera…
Oh, So Close to a Perfect Picture!
I was this close… [ ] note the size… *this* close to taking the perfect picture yesterday. Well, maybe not technically or artistically for some people… I’m no Ansel Adams! But when it comes to *MY* category of “working cow dog photos”, this was was almost there! Taking photos of working dogs is HARD!…
Cody Trip 2
Today was gorgeous and I spent most of it outside, so this is a late post, sorry! To continue the story from yesterday… The preview show began at 8 am… that’s why we had to leave home so early. We arrived in good time. The preview is simply the seller’s showing off what their horse…
Cody Trip
Yes, it snowed again this morning. Yes, we left at 5 am for the Cody Wild West Days Top Notch Horse Sale. Yes, we looked at so many horses I was getting confused. Yes, we discarded some of our pre-sale favorites and chose new ones. Yes, I got sunburned. Yes, there were LOTS of people…
Low Light
I tried to get some photos of 5 bull elk in our field last night. Their antlers have shed, of course, but, body-wise… they were big bulls. However, it was dark-thirty, and I’m very bad at taking pictures in low light. From the top of a 4 wheeler. While it is moving. And the subjects…
Old Vs. New OOPE
Moving cattle the other day… down the highway… on a big curve… this appears… EEEEEK! It’s a SEMI!!! Nah… no, worries, mate… we have signs on the road warning of CATTLE ON ROAD, and around here, truckers know to believe the signs… and they come slow. But this shows the differences between the “old” ways…
Ponies
If you’re one of our horses… you need patience. You need to wait when we doctor, sort in the corral, eartag, eat lunch, and do a hundred other things. You get to take naps and swish flies (though the fly population hasn’t exploded yet!). You get to get used to your buddy and not get…
Bruner Draw
This is Bruner Draw. Named for the man who homesteaded with a small dugout located on the skyline to the right of the most left juniper tree… the fenceline here separates our private ground from BLM. This is the “badlands”. The green in the bottom of this draw also hides a boggy mucky mess that…
Dogs of the Day
Today was the first day in a few, that I’ve been able to settle in, do some chores, play an extended amount of time with the puppies, and have a nice visit with my daughter and her boyfriend. We’ve been moving cows, you see… Elsa and Dally were Dogs of The Day…