Valuable Skills

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My second week on the Ranch continued to be a great learning experience for me. As I get used to the day-to-day activities that are completed on the ranch, I am becoming more accustomed to the work and to the daily expectations. While I did ranch maintenance work, including office work, cleaning, and fixing fences, on some of the days, the other days were full of animal health related activities. I gained a lot of experience and even experienced snow in June!

There were a few specific events that are worth noting from this week. For me, something I was very interested in learning about was the actual doctoring part of working cattle. This week, I was instructed on the techniques used to administer the medications on the ill cattle. This is a skill that I predict I will use often in large animal veterinary medicine and I was grateful to have the hands-on learning experience to help me in understanding more about bovine care.

Additionally, at the end of the week, 100 of the largest cattle on the ranch were to be weighed as they will be sold earlier than the others. I was intrigued to experience the way in which the cattle are weighed most efficiently as it would be nearly impossible to weigh them one by one in a reasonable amount of time. It was interesting to see that cattle were weighed ten at a time and the overall weight was averaged out. Then, it was useful to see how the weights could be used to predict the steer’s weight gain over the next few weeks as well.

During this week, I felt like I had more responsibilities on the ranch aside from simple introductory tasks. It was nice to feel more useful especially in regards to moving cattle and doctoring. With this though, I still have a lot to learn. While I was taught more about administering medicine to cattle, I still have yet to gain a better understanding of the specific dosages that are being administered. Additionally, part of administering the medicine includes tying down the steer which takes some learning. I definitely need more practice with this.

On a similar note, I began learning how to rope properly. This is a skill that I would predict to be useful in the future as well. Being able to rope is crucial in doctoring cattle, so while I am gaining knowledge in regards to doctoring cattle, being able to rope will be another necessary skill I hope to obtain. Though I am only starting to learn the very basics, this is a challenge I am excited to have more practice with.

While some of the questions I had last week upon starting the internship were answered, I still have a great deal of questions to ask in the future. Much of those questions relate to the medicine being administered to the sick cattle. While I am understanding that being able to understand the proper medicine and amount administered is something that can be learned with experience, I still want to learn more about how the strength of the medicine is determined on the spot. For instance, some of the antibiotics being administered are stronger than others and I am curious to learn how the relative dosage can be determined.

One other concept I am eager to ask questions about is the logistics behind moving the cattle from pasture to pasture. Although this question may not be very relative to my specific interests, I find it interesting to learn about. From my understanding so far, there is typically a specific order of rotations for the fields. The cattle will stay in a specific field for a certain number of days depending on the size and how fast they consume the grass. I am still curious about how it is decided how many days the cattle will stay in a specific field and what kind of rotation is used to work most efficiently.

The experience I gained this week will likely be crucial to my future career goals as a large animal veterinarian. The experience that stands out most from this week was the skills gained from doctoring cattle as this is something I will likely be doing on a regular basis in my future career. I plan to use this experience as I care for ill animals as I will know some of the basic symptoms to look for and what can be used to help treat the illness. I also feel as though the experience I gained from simply watching the ways in which cattle are weighed and how that can be used to predict their future weight can be useful in my future as well. I could potentially use this to determine diets for cattle.

In the future, I also plan to use the experience I gained by completing office work as well. This week we had to get caught up on the records for the cattle (days spent in pasture, which pasture, or if there were any losses recorded, etc.). Understanding the typical aspects of cattle health that are recorded for reference is important in ensuring the field rotations are producing healthy cattle. Prior to this week I did not know how critical it is to keep track of the cattle movements and the days spent on pasture. Overall, I feel as though I gained a lot of experience and responsibilities this week and am excited to continue to expand on the skills I have acquired thus far!

Submitted by: Sydney Thorvaldson
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team