An Intern In Charge

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This week at the ranch, life was a bit slower. It rained a lot throughout the week. Monday, I was sent to check the cows by myself for the second time. Morganne and Michael took off to the West Ranch to meet the scale guy to get the scale certified. My hosts headed to town to pick up some groceries and new water tanks we will be putting
at the West Ranch. While everyone was gone, the responsibility of the ranch was left on me.

I first checked the old moms, then the first calf heifers, and finally the 3/4 year olds. After all of the cattle were checked and all the bulls were accounted for, I flipped the water flow on the irrigation pipe. I then went to do the jobs that were laid out for me while everyone was gone. Fixing the fence is one of my main jobs on the ranch. They want to build a new fence (continuous paneling) in some places of the ranch. My job was to take down the barbed wire fence that was already in place for the continuous paneling to be put in. Once I had finished
taking down the wire, they had not returned yet, so I decided to keep myself busy. I would pick up some of the rocks in the feedlot pens. I had filled three five-gallon buckets before they returned.

Tuesday morning, my hosts all left for a three-day fishing trip up in Northern Wyoming. Morganne and I were left in charge of the ranch for the next three days. During these three days, we were left with a list of projects to complete. This list included checking the cows every day, taking down some barbed wire fence, and taking down a wooden corral.

Tuesday morning, when Morganne and I checked the cows, we started in the old moms’ pasture. Morganne and Michael had treated a heifer calf that we found with scours, a droopy head, and a runny nose last week. When I checked the cows on Monday, she was all alone, lying down by the bunks. I went to check on her, and she popped right up and slowly ran away. I made a mental note and told my hosts that we should keep an eye on her. Tuesday morning, Morganne and I found her lying by herself again. She looked worse than when they gave her a shot the first time. We decided to go back and tell them before they left that we needed to treat her again. Morganne and I got the Draxxin from the medicine cabinet and went to give her a shot and two bolus pills. We checked on her every day that week to make sure she was getting better.

On Thursday, it was rainy and very foggy, and we couldn’t find her anywhere, so we told ourselves we would make sure we found her tomorrow. Friday, we didn’t get to check the cows until the afternoon. We saw a coyote running in the field, which is never a good sign. We decided to follow the path from where he came. On this path, we found the calf dead. She has been torn to shreds. This didn’t look like the doing of a coyote, we thought it could’ve been a mountain lion or a wolf. When we picked her up to dispose of her, her legs were still squishy, so we knew
she hadn’t been gone for long.

The rest of the time, when we weren’t checking cows, was spent cleaning up a place they call the Hall Place. This is where we took down a lot of barbed wire fence and the wooden corral. We also cleaned up tin from a fallen building at the site. Once my host had returned, we went back to drilling more post holes with the skid steer to continue our work for the continuous paneling and new gates.

Saturday, we spent the day with Christy, a family member to the host, over at the West Ranch. She showed us around more and showed us some projects we will be asked to complete over there. This week was a good week. We got a lot of projects started, and I can’t wait to see what the result will look like once we get all of the continuous paneling done.

Submitted by: Tamryn Klein
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team