Gather and Brand

#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk

This week consisted of a large gather and branding in Montana once again, as well as more fencing, doctoring calves and preparing to begin haying.

Some of the major points I learned this week were risk management, specifically when it comes to working with horses, as well as the importance of consistency when doctoring calves. At the gather and branding there were a few wrecks that ended in injury for people and horses. Some of these injuries could have been avoided with the folks there understanding how their actions could effect the situations. Horses are influenced by their surroundings, not just their rider, leaving it to be dangerous to have people around that are not diligent about their actions in close proximity.

A concept, or idea, that I would challenge from this week is trying to gather and brand calves in a very large and varying terrain pasture. This creates a harder, more time consuming gather and can result in having to find missing pairs. I would say a different and smaller pasture could be utilized until after your branding, tagging, and vaccination is complete to help ease the effort and time in preparation for a gather and brand.

I have a few questions in regards to the haying process, mainly due to how different many operations go about it. Primarily in terms of their process leading up to and after cutting.But all these questions will be answered in coming weeks as I work with my hosts through the haying season.

This week provided a lot of great experience and an opportunity to develop my planning skills when it comes to pasture choice and utilization leading up to big events, like gathers for branding, calving or even shipping.

Submitted by: Colby Barker
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team