I think about him often. But here, riding is where I remember Johnny most. He was so quiet: in voice, in horsemanship, in stockmanship. Ride into that herd quiet, cut out the cow and calf pair, let your horse be quiet too, turn the pair, and follow them out so they think it’s all their…
Tag: cattle
Photographic
Today was a big day of branding another bunch of calves and trailing the pairs out to the badlands. But first… there’s always a first step… we had to trail them to the branding pen we’d set up, about two miles. Since it was Sunday, all the kids could go along. I chose the sxs…
Move Along
I’ll probably get back to some branding photos, or post some new since we’re trying to figure out when to squeeze another small branding in… but today, we moved some pairs from by my house to the home place. It was a chilly and blustery day that started with a skiff of snow on the…
More
The steer calves get an extra ear tag… Mentors without (perhaps) realizing it… Hot irons are essential. Watchful mommas… While his dad applies the “A” part of the brand, his aunt helps with positioning and a reassuring hand on Quinlan’s shoulder. He could have used a few more rocks in his pockets! Since it was…
Back to Branding
Well, sorry about the radio silence! I updated my version of WordPress which set off a mess of problems… oh, yay. However, since this has happened to me in the past, I didn’t panic, just knew I’d have to spend some time with GoDaddy to straighten things out. I tried using their automated bot to…
Could Have Been So Easy
It was hot! 71 degrees today, if you can believe that. It felt like the 90’s because of the radical change that we haven’t had a chance to acclimate. Of course, we had to move cows today… Our “CATTLE ON ROAD” sign went out and we began to urge the mommas and babies onto the…
Calving in a Blizzard Video
I managed to throw together a video for today’s blizzard. We were lucky and haven’t received near the record amounts of snow across the state. We’re counting our blessings!
Chasing Grass
Well, we had 6-8” of snow on the ground two days ago, and it’s gone today. Anything slightly tilted to the south is dry, but snow remains on the north sides of hills, and there’s still plenty of mud in spots. Never fear, there’s a winter storm warning out for the next few days, with…
Glen
With the storm that blew in last night, I knew I’d better just wait for Vernon to bring me the calf or calves. Sure enough… This big, 100 or 110 pound boy was not extremely cold, even if one ear was partially frozen. But he was still wet, so into my calf cooking bag he…
Tent Calf 2
I was happy with the progress of my not-so-little calf. But he was only one… and we had more cows to attend to. Our Sandhills Method experiment was ready to move onward. We would leave the pairs that had been born in the lot behind… and take the remaining to the pasture around our haystack,…
Tent Calf
Nine inches of wet wet snow. Again, as I was shoveling my sidewalk, and preparing to go help Vernon, he arrived and unloaded a calf. Dang it. I ran to open the gate and door. The calf was sopping wet. He would throw his head backwards. I don’t know what you call it, but that…
Still Snowing
Here we go again. Moving them into this lot didn’t slow calving down, once again we had about 18 calves as a one day total. They’ve been awfully steady. One calf was missing, its mom searching but not finding. We all went on the hunt… putting in lots of man hours. Brandon finally found it…