More cattle stuff

Having accumulated 30 plus hours of ranch hand experience since my last post, thought I would up date ya’ll.

The list of things I have learned now includes

1. Bulls are just as stubborn as calves and cows, just bigger.
2. Even during ‘mud season’, there simply is no such thing as just mud in a grazing pasture.
3. This should be 2a or 2.1 but I cannot figure this fucking thing out. When following someone on a 4 wheeler, do not follow directly behind them. The not mud mud flying at you again, is NOT mud.
4. The “I’m a happy calf!” dance is better when there are a half dozen or so happy calves all doing it at the same time.
5. It is interesting how quickly you can become accustom to being surrounded by creatures that could accidentally smash the life out of you and more importantly, could stomp you from existence in anger if they should choose too. Cows are really pretty mellow.

Cat and Cow Similarities.

I have noticed too that cats and cows share a couple of habits, actions. First, they both associate certain sounds with being fed. For the cows, it is the sound of the tractor that pulls the hay wagon.

The hay wagon is not so much a wagon and a flat bed made from rough cut 2 X 12. It hold 4 bails. Each bail is held together by four strings. When you cut the strings, the bail comes loose. When the hay is bailed, it is in little flats approximately 3″ thick. (Rancher calls them ‘flakes’.)

Once the strings are cut, the tractor driver heads out at a slow pace. The hand (me) starts to knock off one flake at a time and pushes it off the wagon. The cows, ALL OF THE COWS are following the wagon. Many will be trying to eat the hay that is still tied in bails. You (the hand, me) pull and push until the bail has been laid out in single flake piles. Then, on to the next bail to do the same thing. Each feeding is 6 bails.

Oh, about cows and cats – the other thing they have in common is the unknown need to make their respectively assigned sounds (meowing and mooing) repeatedly and loudly as soon as they hear the sound they associate with food. I thought 3 cats was kind of annoying. (Mostly because it is really unnecessary, they will still be fed if if they are silent.) 200 cows is an entirely different experience. One I am glad I do not have to go through before coffee, unlike I do with the cats

Call me Jame.

Not everything is fun.

Cows and calves use scent to be able to recognize one another in a large pasture of large animals that all largely look exactly alike. I was told that in the days of yar, cows would clean up their birthing area by eating the placenta and licking clean their calf. This reduces the likelihood of predators, wolves being example given to me, tracking down the youngins’ . This process imbedded the scent of the calf on the mother and lead to the calf to imprint on the mama.

At times there can be a calf without a mama and mama with out a calf. When you have both, the ideal is to get the two together. There is a process called Grafting the Calf that is sometimes effective. It is very Silence of the Lambs.

You have probably already figured out what this entails. No? Oh, let me tell you then.

You take the deceased calf from the mother. Hang it up and remove its skin. (Another new thing I learned, skinning!) When you have the skin off, you cut a hole in the neck area big enough to fit over the orphan calves head. Then, you take the dressed calf back to the calfless cow. Usually the cow, smelling its calf lets the calf, seeing a full utter, feed. If they bond, everyone one goes home happy. If they do not, a heavy sigh with intermittent cursing.

Either way, my skinning skills are improving.

Damn it!!

It is in a beavers DNA to want to block running water. It is important that a ranch have running water. Water from the river and the creek are diverted out onto the fields that in turn grow the hay that is fed to the cows. That is of course, if the water can flow.

Beavers are industrious little fuckers.

Wearing thing high boots and armed with a five foot long hook, I got down into the water and repeatedly inserted the hook into the blocked culverts. Hook. Pull. Toss aside stuff. Repeat. In and of itself not terrible. However…

Being Wyoming, it had to be freezing and snow the night before doing this. No matter what you call the water source, river, creek, stream, ditch, when there is snow on the ground and ice on the banks, the water in the water source is really COLD! When you hands are in it, when it gets down into your boots, it makes YOU really cold.

Driving this and that.

There are a LOT of different motorized things on a cattle ranch. Each and every one of them is fun to drive. I hope I am still needed when all the stuff for hay comes into play.

Well, that is about it for now. I am sure something else will come along that I will want to share. In the mean time, have a big breakfast and do the “I’m a happy calf!” dance. I know you can see it in your head already. I know you want to do it.

Peace,

Ant-Knee