Tag Archives: cows

ATTAGIRLS!

 

20150929-IMG_4348

 

It looks like Terri and Lee were having too much fun yesterday loading the hay truck before heading up into Greasy to check the cattle and stockwater. We’re feeding somewhere everyday as the calves come, giving the cows a little extra as they raise new calves, while also trying to keep the cows in shape so they’ll cycle and breed back in December. Hopefully we’ll get some rain and green grass before then.

Rather than let the cows get thin before starting to feed, we feel it’s easier to keep the flesh on and more economic to start feeding early. While making our circles to monitor our stockwater, we began taking hay in early August, gradually increasing the amount to where we’re feeding full time now until the grass comes.

With more dry feed and less cows in our upper country, we make the 4-wheel drive trek to Greasy and the Paregien Ranch once a week, while feeding our younger cows down low three times a week. Stockwater in our upper country is more tentative and needs to be checked regularly.

Robbin and I were waiting to load the Kubota to feed another bunch as the girls were tossing 130 pound bales around. We followed behind them later and managed to see all the cows, calves and replacement heifers on the east side of Dry Creek, very pleased with all we saw.

 

Dawn on the Pasture

 

20150925-IMG_4854

When I arrived yesterday to change my irrigation water, a coyote was nonchalantly studying these cows and calves from just outside the fence. The cow beneath the Valley Oak was lying close to her calf, hours old. The cows, of course, knew he was there well before I did. Taking an indirect approach, coyotes will gradually work their way among the cattle acting preoccupied and harmless until they become familiar to a bunch, all the while looking for any weakness among the calves—hence the Trickster moniker.

We have completed our first month of calving and pleased with 50% of our calves on the ground, a bright spot in the middle of this drought, though our total cow numbers have been reduced by half these past four years. This is the third calf for this particular bunch of cows bred by Vintage Angus bulls.

 

20150925-IMG_4837

As the light turns softer and shadows longer, early mornings can be rewarding with lots of wildlife this time of year, especially where there is water. About twenty Canadian Geese are stripping the ripe seed of the water grass elsewhere in the pasture and our little bunch of wild turkeys, that are becoming used to me and the Kubota, are rummaging for bugs where I’ve completed my irrigation.

I take my camera, never knowing what I’ll see.

 

POSTCARD HOME

 

20150806-IMG_0414

 

Dear Dad, you never saw a drought like this,
four years running, so few cows left on the ranch—
nor I a war like yours: bait for Nazis in the Bulge.

The world has changed, the planet ever-changing:
ice caps melt, oceans rise, seasons out-of-sync
with what we know. New ground to graze

now that I am old. Nothing in the mountains
for bears to eat, they roll down ridges, track
dusty roads on the scent of fresh placentas,

lion pads everywhere you go. We cannot leave
this canyon, these calves, alone—all living
off this piece of ground that we are so bound.

 

CIRCLES IN AUGUST

 

IMG_0456

 

We track circles on the same ground
through brush and granite rock,
over mountains and down canyons

patched with spooky skeletons
of trees, broken limbs at their feet.
Last year’s blond and brittle feed

folds into dust under foot, under wheel
into decent firebreaks swirling around us
as we check springs and clean water troughs

measured with our eye. We carry hay,
fat cows come running six to the bale
once a week, fresh calves knocking

at the door of a new and wobbly world—
waiting to inhale one hundred degree heat.
Too soon to rain, we plod like cows

in dusty circles, all soft trails
lead to water and shade, or to the hum
of solar pumps in abandoned wells.

 

THE GIRLS

 

IMG_0057

 

Horseback, the girls work
cattle in the dust, sort cows
from calves before hauling

off the hill to the weaning pen:
a quiet dance to a rhythm
I can only see through boards

as cows ask with their eyes
before moving towards the open
space a horse has made

to leave their calves behind.
No loud bravado spurring
pirouettes into dirt clouds.

I turn away and walk
to the pickups and goosenecks—
remove my maleness

from these corrals that hold
a hundred years of urgent
echoes: men making mistakes

to invent new profanities.
Instead, the perfect sense
of girls instructing girls.

 

BLACK CAP

 

IMG_4272-2

 

Selected to stay,
to be bred and have babies,
we must give them names.

 

THE GIRLS

 

IMG_3909

 

It’s all about the girls
on this ranch, mothers
and grand, grandmothers
grazing a life away.

We’ve found our pace
despite the drought
trusting one another’s
competence and will.

Gentle strumming
in the background,
dark to light
and black again,

no day the same,
each moment full
of contrasting details,
lyrics raining down.

 

McKee Branding — Woolly Canyon 2015

Beautiful day for the last branding of the season. At this stage of the game, we don’t know until we wake up in the morning how we’re going to feel about getting a horseback or roping in the branding pen. I’ve long been demoted from the ground crew wrestling calves when I’m not roping, relegated to visiting and watching the action from along the fence — which suits me fine.

Followers of drycrikjournal will recognize Kenny and Virginia McKee in nearly all the photographs of our brandings, and yesterday was our turn to try and repay them for their help all season. To be of help becomes increasingly important as we age, especially in this culture, and it’s been gratifying to see the next generation of cowboys mature as cowmen, horsemen and human beings. We’re truly grateful to be among them and this cattle community. Robbin was able to take a few photos between vaccinating calves that highlighted a day of fun while we got the work done.

 

Fresh Calf

September 5, 2012

September 5, 2012

 

We calve in the fall and brand in the spring. As newborns go, this calf is fresh, only minutes old and yet to stand and nurse. Robbin and I are off this morning to help our neighbors, Kenny and Virginia McKee, brand the last of their calves.

 

 

https://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_photo_challenge/fresh-2/

 

TIME TO LOVE

 

4c63aa_f022ae026db447708fcf65209843aadb.jpg_srz_p_293_270_75_22_0.50_1.20_0

                                                                                                    Gail Steiger

 

Two months from Elko
busy branding calves,
begging for rain and grass,

we listen under an empty
overcast to “A Matter
of Believin’” as if Gail

were here with 100 years
of ranching lessons
in poetry and song.

South slopes all but done,
thin feed gray on clay
showing again,

it’s time to love
this short spring
wrapped in wildflowers

with our old friend
and glass of wine—
the whole show

mostly behind us now,
we indulge ourselves,
embrace the storms

of good fortune
we have worn well—
believing and trusting,

adapting like cattle
to these same hills
just harvesting grass.