Wrapping It Up
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
This week marks my last full week at my internship. Though I feel like it was just yesterday that I arrived at the ranch, as I look back on the last few weeks, I realize the incredible amount of experience and knowledge I have gained throughout the internship. Not only have I had the opportunity to become more comfortable and confident in my abilities as it pertains to working with cattle and horses, but I have also gained great insight into overall ranch maintenance and success. I am very excited to move forward with the process of applying to vet schools and finishing out my senior year of classes with the knowledge and experience I have gained as I believe it will prove to be helpful. As I head into my final week (a little less than a full week) of the internship, I am sad to leave, but feel fulfilled with everything that was accomplished.
Throughout this week I worked in a multitude of different areas on the ranch as I worked in the pastures with cattle, in the office with records, and in some of the ranch building cleaning and organizing. Aside from these tasks during the workday, I also spent one night this week doing sound monitoring for a wedding taking place on the ranch as well. Working in these different aspects of the ranch made for a well-balanced week of work and reminded me of the variety of skills I have gained experience with. For me, this week was exactly what I needed. During my last full week of the internship, it was nice to be given the opportunity to have a sense of variation in the tasks I was completing. I also enjoyed being able to do something different each day of the week as it broke up the monotony and reminded me that there is always work to be done, and no day is the same on the ranch.
Though this week was a little slower than the last as the construction for the ranch rodeo (that took place last Sunday) was complete, there were still many tasks on the schedule for this week. One of the tasks included preparing some of the rentable cabins on the ranch for hunting season. This served as another reminder of the ways in which the ranch itself can be utilized for other activities in order to make a profit on the side. This is especially significant when the cattle are no longer on the ranch, as other sources of income are extremely valuable. To prepare the cabins, we had to move furniture items into them so that they are ready for the hunters and/or hunting guides that pay to stay on the ranch during hunting season.
Outside of concepts relating to ranch management, other tasks completed this week pertained to my interests in animal health and had to do with cattle nutrition. Much of the work with cattle this week related to putting out supplements for the herds. There was not much doctoring to be completed this week, and the cattle were not worked too much as the temperatures were relatively high this week, so my main responsibility was ensuring they are still being supplemented effectively. This week we also switched from a mixed bag of minerals to only salt. This was the first week that they had been given only salt as a supplement.
The switch from mixed mineral to only salt created a multitude of questions for me. I did not have the chance to ask why the mineral was switched, but I am curious about the factors that determine this. As I looked into this further I found that in general the type of supplement/mineral being given depends greatly on the pasture and environmental conditions and also the stage of growth that the cattle are in. If I had to make a prediction, I would guess that since the weather this week was hotter than usual, more sodium was given. These general considerations make sense, but I still have questions about the aspects of the environment and growth stage that are looked at to determine this.
Another topic that I am interested in learning more about pertains to cattle gains and the factors that might affect them. This week, my boss raised concerns about the cattle on one side of the ranch losing gains as a result of inefficient pasture conditions. This made me question cattle gains and losses as it relates to grass quality. It makes sense that better pasture would result in greater gains in the cattle, but I am curious as to how these gains and losses can be monitored and measured. Additionally, much of the pasture conditions are determined by the irrigation effectiveness therefore I am interested to see the ways in which these pastures will be irrigated differently in order to make up for these losses.
With the experience I gained this week, I first and foremost hope to understand cattle development better. Through better understanding the mineral requirements and pasture conditions optimal for cattle, I hope to be able to have a better understanding of effective cattle nutrition. Cattle nutrition was a topic that I did not realize would be this critical, especially during this internship. I did not realize the factors and considerations that can influence cattle gains, but I am thankful to be more aware of those factors now. Having a better understanding of the factors that impact cattle nutrition will be useful to know as I take more animal nutrition and health classes in the future.
On a similar note, I hope to use the knowledge I obtained regarding cattle nutrition, in addition to the knowledge I was exposed to with pasture conditions, to optimize cattle gains. I would like to continue to broaden my understanding in regard to pasture conditions as I was able to see firsthand how it can affect cattle gains. By understanding how to use pasture in combination with effective cattle supplementing and health, I would be able to develop an extremely useful skill set as I head into an animal medicine field of study. Much of the issues relating to large animals can relate to their nutrition therefore I am hopeful that the experience I have obtained throughout this week, and the internship as a whole, will help me understand the relationship between large animal health and nutrition and the ways in which it can be optimized.
Submitted by: Sydney Thorvaldson
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
