There is Always Something Happening on the Ranch
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
Starting off the week, we went to some new pasture that I had never seen before, due to it being separate from the home ranch. It was important for me to learn more of the land that I could be dealing with in weeks to come. It is difficult to learn all of the pastures, but David said even by the end of the ten weeks I might not even learn all of the pastures. We were on the new part, that the ranch just leased, which is just right behind the Big Pasture a lot this week. I like that we are going to some of the same places repeatedly, it helps me learn a bit faster. While we were up there, most of the time was spent trying to figure out the water systems, trying to figure out why some tanks had water and others didn’t.
On Monday, we hauled horses over to the Zimmerman Place, and from there we saddled the horses up to move pairs to the School Section. The School Section is located across the state line; with that being said, I learned that just because they are only crossing the state line into another pasture, they still have to be inspected. We had to trail the cattle three to four miles to get to the School Section. Once we returned to the ranch, I cleaned out the horse stalls to round out my day of work.
Similar to last week, there was more fencing to be done. We had to finish where we started last Friday at Sam’s Place. We didn’t have much left, it was probably the worst part of the fence. Along with finishing that fence, we had to fix a gate. The gate stick had broken, we were replacing it with a new one. I learned putting a new gate stick on is not as easy as it sounds because you have to cut all of the wires off the old gate stick and tighten them onto the new one. After we finished those tasks, we checked another stretch of fence, where we would be putting cattle after branding them this weekend.
The following day we had loaded up the horses and headed out to the east side of the land where they tried getting a pair to be branded this weekend, but they weren’t in the same spot when we last saw them. Commonly things do not go as planned, while looking for that pair, we found yearlings that got out of their pasture. Once we moved and put back the yearlings where they were supposed to be, we headed back to the home place. That afternoon we jumped in the side-by-side to head out to the new lease, we tried to figure out the water systems a tad bit more. We found some of our answers, but not all of them. Also, while we were out there, we found a bum calf. We were able to bring the calf back with us, started doctoring him and giving him a bottle.
Prior to finding the yearlings out the other day, we knew there had to be fence out somewhere. That morning Dave and I went to find out. We started by giving the yearlings some salt and mineral by one of the water tanks. We also had to fix one of the gates that surrounded a solar well. After that, we began checking the fence and it didn’t take us very long to find where they were getting out. You could clearly tell that this spot was where they were getting out because there was a path. We found one area but we finished checking the entire fencing. After we finished fixing the fence, we had another gate stick to fix.
On Friday, we had a pretty easy-going day as we helped some neighbors move out of their house. I also was able to drive the John Deere skid loader for the first time. Once we were back at the house, we had to start preparing for branding on Saturday. We started with hooking up the livestock trailer, then we went out and wrangled the horses so that we wouldn’t have to get them early in the morning. Once again, we went to the lease to try and figure out if we could find more answers; we found a couple but still not quite the right answers.
To finish out the work week, on Saturday we branded 156 head of calves. I have never branded in that type of atmosphere before. It was definitely a new and fun experience. I learned how to carefully wrestle a calf to be able to flip it on its side to where we would be branding. These calves were either branded on their left hip or their left rib. While participating in the branding, I met a lot of new people. I don’t know if I am going to be able to remember their names by next week, but I will sure try!
Submitted by: Josie Sackett
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
