Sorting, Branding, & Grafting

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We started the week by going over to Ranchester, Wyoming. There we gathered up around 75 head of cattle. After we gathered them, we had to sort the cows off from the calves. Once they were all sorted, it was time to brand the calves. The branding that we did this time was different from what we did on last Saturday. For this branding we had to push the calves into a shoot by hand. We would make sure the calf was secure in the shoot, then the shoot was flipped sideways so that the calves were laying on their right side to receive their branding.

Once our branding was complete, we headed back to the ranch where we had to graft a calf. This is a process used when a cow loses her calf, and another calf who does not have a mother is paired with the calf-less cow. Grafting a calf means we had to retrieve the hide from the deceased calf and put that hide on a new calf. By doing so, the hope is the cow of the dead calf will smell her calf’s hide and adopt the orphaned calf as her own. That process pretty much rounded out our day; however, when I got back to the home ranch, I was able to move into my own house on the ranch.

To begin the next day, we took salt and mineral out to the yearlings. Then, we loaded up the horses and drove back to the Middle Fork pasture. We had to gather pairs to be put on the Homestead pasture; this took the majority of our day. Going into the afternoon, we had to change a tire on the side by side before we went back to the Sam’s pasture to doctor a cow. From looking at her, it looked like she had foot rot. After assessing and doctoring her, we went and checked on the water tanks.

On Wednesday this week, we brought the horses in to head to Nate’s house. Once we arrived, it was time to saddle up and head out to check bulls. We only had to gather 10 out of the pasture that we were headed to. Once we got back to the home ranch, we worked 13 of the bulls that were there in the corrals. We then loaded up 7 bulls to go to the School Section and we loaded another 7 bulls to go out to another ranch where they were put in the bull pasture. Patrick and I took those 7 bulls out there then we made the hour trek back to Nate’s ranch to get more bulls. It was definitely a long day in the truck, but I was able to help vaccinate bulls for foot rot and we treated them for flies.

The following day, I started the day by feeding my bum calf, which I have to feed everyday in the morning, at lunch time, and then again in the evening. Once again, we saddled our horses to go move pairs, this time we moved them out of the Big Pasture into the Thorburn Pasture. I was able to go off on my own to go move cattle today; I was very proud of myself because I got my horse to gallop. Later in the day I did some yard work and then helped Terri with more work in her yard.

To round out the week, we had a pretty easy, laid-back day. It was very rainy and we had rained the night before. Taking advantage of what we could, we just did some little stuff around the ranch. We went down to the mailboxes, added some and fixed some others. Overall, due to the rain, our tasks were limited for a couple days.

Submitted by: Josie Sackett
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team