Ranching 101: Learning to Think Beyond the Playbook
#bfrdpwy #aginternship #RightRisk
This was my final week of the Growing internship. This is hard to believe, these 10 weeks have gone by very quickly with so many opportunities to learn. To start off the week, I headed up the mountain to grab a few straggler cows and move them up to where the rest of the cows were. After this, the week consisted of mainly irrigating and making the most of the water while we have it.
Due to the fact I have already written about these activities in previous reflections, I have decided to write about an activity I got to be a part of a couple of weeks ago. This activity was trichomoniasis testing my host family’s bulls before bringing them up the mountain to turn them out on the cows. This experience was very educational for me. I learned what trich was and how it can cause temporary infertile cows, as well as mid gestation abortions which in turn are going to reduce calf crop numbers. I was fortunate enough to watch the vet perform the tests on these bulls after being explained to why they test for trich and what it can cause.
During the trich testing I was able to gain some knowledge on moving livestock through a chute. My host taught me some tips and tricks to help get stubborn livestock to move through the chute and let me preform these on the bulls. This was very beneficial to me because now not only has this internship given me livestock handling practice out on the range, but also in confined areas like a corral system with a chute. With this, I can now bring these experiences and tools to other endeavors I may find myself on. Overall, being able to sit in on the trichomoniasis testing allowed me to understand what it is and why it’s important to test for, as well as equipping me with more livestock handling experience.
As my internship comes to an end, there is one more important lesson I would like to talk about. When reflecting on my experiences during the growing internship, I realized how much it challenged me to be more of a free thinker as opposed to always doing things in a “by the book” manner. I have always been somebody who wants to have exact directions on how to complete something. Reading or listening to step-by-step instructions provided to me is the style of learning I have always had. When this option isn’t available to me, I tend to get nervous that I am doing something wrong. My host has truly pushed me to not think this way and minimize the stress I tend to have when doing new things. He made it clear to me that the tasks I am doing often aren’t done by a playbook, but rather your better judgment. His saying this caused me to step back and think more logically as opposed to looking at everything as if I was writing a research paper on it.
Although having that academic brain is important, in so many cases in life we need to balance this with an ability to think on the fly and use our common sense to complete tasks at hand. This becomes especially important in farming and ranching. Like I’ve said in other reflections, there will be no “Ranching 101” book, instead there is a goal to be reached and how you get there is largely up to you. Challenging myself as my career in agriculture continues to utilize what I learn in school not as an instructional guide, but instead as a tool to use along with my own thinking and application through experience and logic will be volatile to success in my opinion.
I think what makes good farmers and ranchers is improvising, and I am not aware of any book that will prepare for every situation that gets thrown at you in this industry. We don’t always have everything we need or want, but making do with what we have is what needs to be done. Now many of these things may seem obvious, and as I write them, I think that too, but sometimes it’s the most obvious things that we lose sight of. I know that I needed this internship to be reminded that not everything in our work is done by the book, and if we try to do it that way, it may only hurt us.
Submitted by: Jonah Verhoef
Edits by: GrowinG Internship Team
