A Week with Horses

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In my first week of work at the ranch here in Wyoming, I have been able to be a part of helping unload cattle from a trailer into pens and, eventually, into pasture. Along with that, I have learned the importance of good communication with everyone who is involved in tasks as such to make it run smoothly. I have also learned more about horse behavior, specifically those that haven’t been ridden since last year, and how to bring them back to being comfortable in the saddle.

As far as any ideas or situations from this week that I would challenge, I don’t think I would necessarily disagree with what we did, but there are definitely a few things that could have been done a different way. One situation that comes to mind is that we have a few different locations for the ranch and we have had to move a handful of horses around in the last week. What we did was drop some off and pick some up three of the five days of the week, but maybe what we could’ve done was wait until the end of the week to do it all at once. Another example would be that we have a list of projects to do and we are sort of working on each of them little by little instead of doing one at a time from start to finish. Although, sometimes it can be out of our control based on equipment availability, weather, number of people to help, etc.

I think there are a lot of questions that I still have, since it has only been one week, but I see it as a good thing. A general question I have, that I know I will learn more about as the summer goes on, is – what exactly the profit and spending comes out to in total for the ranch since they have many different modes of income, and obviously also spend money on a lot of different things. Another big question that I have is how an operation like this one might be different if it were in a different location. This location is unique in the high amount of tourism, which the ranch is able to take advantage of.

With the information that I have learned this week, I plan to use it to generate more questions and continue to expand my knowledge on the industry. I also am motivated to keep building on to my knowledge and experience in working with horses, especially in the saddle. My horsemanship skills are some that I plan to utilize throughout the rest of my life, so this opportunity is very valuable to me. I also plan to continue to make connections with people in this area and industry to expand my network, which is so important in agriculture.

Submitted by: Mack Mlnarik
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team