Ranching: It’s More Than the Work Outside
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To start out the week I filled the sprayer up with Tordon and headed up to the Little Goose Corrals first thing in the morning. I sprayed all the weeds in and around the corrals. Then, the guys met me up there and we cleaned up a little bit around the corrals and placed a shoot that we could use to doctor cattle. We hung a gate before breaking for lunch; the remainder of my day I spent weed eating arounds the shops.
On Tuesday, it was raining first thing in the morning, so I helped Terri with some financial stuff. We talked about her spreadsheets, which keep the ranch very organized and running. She keeps everything personal in a different location. She had everything for the E-U side of the ranch on one spreadsheet and the HN part of the ranch on another spreadsheet. We talked about all things financial which taught me a lot, the ranch isn’t just about working outside. We also talked about a project that the ranch was nominated to do and even worked on that a little bit. When we were towards the end, I went out and collected inventory on the hay stacks to give Terri an idea of what was left from the last feeding season. That afternoon we got things loaded for Wednesday and David and I shoed some horses.
The following day we headed out to the Zimmerman Corrals. Once we got there, we got our horses ready to go and headed over to the West Side Creek Pasture. We gathered the cattle that were in there and put them in the corrals. We then got the sprayer ready so that we could spray all the cows for flies. David, Nate, and I sorted the cows from the calves and starting working the calves. We got all 100 calves worked by the time the rest of the crew came with more cattle. I was pretty impressed with the three of us because I would push the calves into the tub and then push them into the ally and chute, I felt like I was four people in one. David would catch them in the shoot and Nate would vaccinate them. After lunch, we gathered the other cattle in the corrals and sprayed them for flies. We then worked the calves as well. It went a lot quicker because there was more of us there in the afternoon.
On Thursday, we headed to the Doyle Horse Pasture and gathered all 200 head of cattle from that pasture. We then trailed them to the Zimmerman Corrals. Once again, we sprayed them and then we sorted the cows from calves. While sorting you have to be patient because the cows will see the open gate and then they know to go through there and the calves don’t know any better so they usually stay in the pen. There are some calves that might try and go with their mothers but usually somebody is at the gate to stop the calves. After lunch we worked all the calves; we gave them a nasal vaccine and then a foot rot booster. We were preparing them to take them up the mountain next week.
The following day I started out by getting the sprayer filled up and ready to go, I then head out to the OTO Corrals to spray them again because we think the Tordon we used before was old or it had frozen during the winter, so we purchased new Tordon and that’s what I used. It had rained Thursday night leaving the area extremely muddy- when I got back to the house I was supposed to go up to the Little Goose Corrals but it was way too wet so David sent me to town to run some errands. When I got back from town, David and I headed out to fix some oilers and put a new float on a water tank.
To round out the week I headed up to the Little Goose Corrals to spray in and around the corrals. Towards the end, I could smell something burning and I pulled the plugin out of the sprayer and it had melted leaving me the option to head back to the house. We switched four wheelers and had to switch cords as well. I sprayed behind the shop on the hill and then behind the barn. I then went up to the Weigand to spray around everything up there.
Submitted by: Josie Sackett
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
