True Detective

Caution – This post contains graphic descriptions that may be offensive to some people.

          About 22 years ago I sent a message to my brother that I had been dating a gal who thought she could make me politically correct.  He messaged back that she should settle for socially acceptable.

          I can’t make any sense out of why most people do what they do.  In fact, I don’t much care what people do.  But I do study the behavior of cattle and horses.

Our calving operation is designed to take advantage of the natural behavior of cattle.  The entire calving field is visible from my kitchen window.  We feed and bed at one end of the field, knowing that two hours after feeding the cattle will break for water.  Most of the cattle will then drift back to the feed and bedding – but those few that are beginning labor will drift to the end of the field away from the rest of the herd, and toward the calving shed.

This evening I noted one cow traveling away from the herd in the suspicious manner of one that is beginning labor.  It was plenty cold, and it would be beneficial to put her in the shed before dark, where her new calf would have a much warmer and drier environment for those first challenging hours of his life.  I fell in behind her.

As I followed her toward the shed, I began my detective work.

Pregnancy in a cow is not obvious as it is in a human.  A cow eats a large amount of course roughage every day, and the volume of that feeding is about as much as the fetus growing inside her.  There is only a subtle difference in the position of her distended rumen higher and to the left versus her distended uterus lower and to the right.

Immediately after calving one can see the reduction on the lower right side; and a cow also goes off feed for the first day, reducing the volume on the upper left side.  So her figure does change quickly – for a day or two.

As I followed this cow, however, her profile was ambiguous.  Her lower right side was not so pronounced, but neither could she be described as gaunt.

As a cow comes within a week or two of calving, her labia become relaxed and swollen.  Her udder begins to fill up

The labia of this cow, however, was not typical of a cow near to term.  Nor was her udder tight and swollen.

There was no accumulation of amniotic fluid on the tail to indicate that she had recently calved. 

As I drew along side of her I could see that in fact two of her teats had been sucked, and the fullness of her udder had been drawn down by a calf.  Why was she leaving the herd in such a determined fashion?

As we rounded the corner of the shed, the answer became apparent.  Her calf was stashed in the brush behind the shed – as far as it could get from the rest of the herd.

All those signs immediately added up.  She had calved a couple of days before, and hence her labia were healing and returning to normal.  She had just filled up with hay.  She was leaving the feed-grounds to return to her calf.

Mystery solved.  Another case closed in the life of a cowboy.

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Winter Storm Warning

Here’s the forecast for Memorial Day 2019:

Rain and snow showers, becoming all snow after noon. Patchy fog. Temperature rising to near 39 by 8am, then falling to around 32 during the remainder of the day. East northeast wind 8 to 10 mph. Chance of precipitation is 100%. Total daytime snow accumulation of around 2 inches.

         My last blog-post from one month ago declared it to be spring.  A lot of water has gone under the bridge since then – literally.  It’s been a cold wet spring.

          We don’t have much farming to do – only about 40 acres of hay renovation.  But it isn’t done yet.  There has only been a day or two in the last month when it was dry enough to get in the field with a plow.  Another job is weed-spraying.  But that, too, requires some dry weather.

          I had set Sunday the 19^th as our date for branding, but the rains came.  One can’t brand wet calves.  The moisture in the hair cools the irons too quickly, and it causes steam, which scalds the skin a blotches the brand.

          Yesterday, however, we tried again.

          There had actually been a bit of dust on the very surface of the county road. There were breaks in the overcast sky.  I sent a group text to the help I had lined up, and we began gathering early.

          We had the cows in the trap when stock trailers began to roll in.  Several people went to work sorting cows out one gate while holding back the calves.  Another group was at work on the other end of the trap sorting calves into the corral.  We were soon running cows through the chute for their annual vaccinations for some respiratory and reproductive diseases.

          Two of us were ahorseback pushing cows up the alley.  Two more were feeding cows into the chute.  One was running the headcatch, one was mixing vaccine, two were vaccinating, two were keeping the cows moving up the chute.

          The last of the cows were still in the chute when I lit the propane burner and ropers tightened their cinches.  As soon as the irons were hot, I gave the signal and the calves began to be heeled to the fire.

          I was kept busy slapping on brands and hurrying back to the pot for a fresh hot iron; Eric was vaccinating; dark clouds were closing in.

   
       We were about half way through the bunch when Darin rode up and told me to go to roping – he’d take over the branding.

          Thunder began rumbling in the distance as we worked steadily through the calves.  The last calf was drug in just as the first raindrops fell.

          We quickly closed up the tool boxes that held our vaccinating guns.  I’d forgotten on which post I’d hung my vest. I swung onto my horse and grabbed the reins of Eric’s horse as the rain increased.  We loped the half mile to the barn, where I found my coat.  Raindrops stung my face as I sped to the house on my four-wheeler.

          Rain pounded on the roof as the crew lined up in the kitchen to load their plates with sloppy joes, potato salad, and baked beans.

          I produced a jug of Wild Turkey to help lubricate the bantering and story-telling that followed.  We were all in a magnanimous mood. A disparate crew of friends and neighbors, town folk and cattlemen, old hands and uninitiated, had come together like a well-oiled machine to accomplish an essential task; we had done it in record time; and we had beat the rain!

Read here about another day of Branding on the West Boulder.

It's Spring!

            Spring in Montana is hard to define or to describe.  We have a lot of nice spring days, but the worst blizzard I have experienced began on April 15 of 1973; I struggled to keep new-born calves alive in below zero weather in April of 1987; There are years when we are still feeding hay to the cows right up until the end of May. 

            But for this year, I declare spring to have arrived on April 19.

            The first indication of spring was that the interior of my car was hot when I returned from my side-gig at Crow agency.  I had to turn on the air conditioner.  There was a boat being gassed up when I stopped to fill my tank.  I saw several tractors out working in the fields as I drove home.  Bugs began to accumulate on my windshield.  And finally, I had to pick up beer cans along the county road passing across a corner of the ranch.

            The snowstorms are indeed fewer in April, and the white stuff melts off quicker.  The landscape is taking on a green cast. Days are longer.  Most of the cows have calved, and they are eating less and less hay every day.  Some ranches are branding.  We’ve gotten a little fencing done.

            But it’s still a long time until June.  While there are little spears of grass poking out, there still is not nearly enough growth to sustain the plants, nor to sustain the cows.  We’ll be feeding every day for a few more weeks.  The fields are too wet to get any farming done.

            

          And it's still too early to sit out on the deck drinking beer.

A Toy or a Tool?

            All manner of mechanical toys are commonly seen in America these days: skis, surfboards, trail bikes, dirt bikes, boats, snowmobiles,  ATVs…  Town folks work all week to have the time and money to escape the city and enjoy the great outdoors from the vantage-point of these expensive devices.

            What are toys to the city-folk, however, have become tools for the rancher.  Far more cattle are now handled by four-wheelers than by horses. And the side-by-side ATV is just the tool to check on cattle, ride out to change irrigation sets, haul salt to the cattle, and fix fence.  A side-by-side is far more convenient than a pickup, uses far less gas, and is far easier on the land.  In addition to trucks, tractors, pickups, farm implements, and haying equipment, we now consider both a four-wheeler and a side-by-side to be essential to ranch operations.

            And now we have a tracked side-by-side.

            This morning we have 18 below zero and some 2 feet of snow.  It’s just too much for a pickup – even with chains on all four tires – so we’re feeding with a big four-wheel-drive tractor and a hay wagon.

            But we are just beginning to have new calves, and we needed to get out to check on the calves.

            The horses were all out to pasture, and we usually use the four-wheeler to run them in when we need them.  The snow is far too deep for the quad. This new Ranger was just the tool to bring in horses.

            To get ahorseback, however, I would have to follow the tracks through knee-deep snow to the horsebarn, saddle a horse, and ride a half mile out to the cows.

            Eric has his new tool sitting just off his front porch.  He fired it up, swung by to pick me up, and we were through the cattle and back in the kitchen drinking coffee in less time than it would have taken just to saddle up.

            I’m a bit ashamed.  In the old days we’d have harnessed the team and hitched them to a bob-sled, maybe leading a saddle-horse behind.  It would have taken several loads.  We’d have spent most of the day breaking trail with the horses.

            Now we can spend a couple of hours inside the cab of the tractor – stepping out only to flake the hay off the wagon.  Then we can drop off the loader and mount the snowblower, to clear away the snow from the trails and the gates rather than just trampling it down.

            No longer the clop of the hooves and the jingle of trace-chains in the dead-quiet of a snow-filled world.  Now the growl of a tractor and the whine of an ATV engine break the silence. 

            And this is progress?!?

Winter: Delayed Onset

            Normally, one speaks of a bad winter as a hyphenated number – as in “the winter of ‘78-‘79 when I was on a ranch west of Choteau.  The snow and cold began in November of 1978, and continued through February of 1979.  (You can read more about this winter in my book Ain't This Romantic!?!.)  But this winter didn’t start until February.

            Montana weather is notoriously fickle – a “typical” winter in Montana has temps on any given day ranging from 40 below to 40 above. In fact, on January 15, 1972 in the town of Loma, in central Montana, the temperature rose from 54^o below to 49°F above – in one day!

            Some years we get little snow in the winter months, and sometimes get large amounts of snow in the “spring” months.  The previous two winters here on the West Boulder we have had significant snow in the winter months, and have been quite pleased to have a serious snow-blower.

            Some years we have snow and below zero as early as November, and I have seen below-zero weather and serious blizzard in April.  (More of these stories in the book Ain’tThis Romantic!?!

            This winter didn’t begin until February.  The cows had been out grazing until then, and we didn’t begin feeding hay until late January, when they had grazed off all the available grass.

            We all enjoy an open winter, but I’m always aware of the fact that we will pay for it later.  If we don’t pay for it by having bad weather in “the spring”, then we’ll pay for it with poor pasture and fires in the summer.

            February of this year has been brutal. It’s the 2^nd coldest February on record for Montana, and we have knee-deep snow.  And this is the time when many ranchers are calving.

            A new calf can stand ten below just fine – if he is dried off and has a full belly.  But being pushed soaking wet out of the womb and into a snowbank is a recipe for hypothermia.  And that hypothermia slows the brain processes enough to delay standing and sucking.  Many calves born outside in that weather don’t make it.

            Those ranchers who do calve in January and February all have sheds into which they can take new calves – or cows who are about to calve.  They check their cows regularly all day, and several times at night. We have such a shed, but we choose to wait until mid-March to begin calving – when the days are longer and the nights not quite so cold.

            We took on another 45 cows in January, however, that are bred to begin calving now.

            We always throw up an electric fence to contain the “heavy” cows in a field that is entirely visible from the house.  But the ground is frozen.  We’ll have to drill into the dirt to drive in posts for our temporary fence.  And the deep snow makes it difficult to trail in the cows that are near to calving.

            “They” say that if March comes in like a lion it will go out like a lamb.  But March 1^st was a pleasant interlude of 20^o above and sunny.  I hope that lamb-like 20 above doesn’t portend a March going out like a lion. 

            It was 10 below on the morning of March 2^nd, with a forecast for an overnight low of -18^o.

Handshake Deal

            I just bought some hay, for many thousands of dollars, from a fellow I’ve never met, in a different state, to be hauled by another fellow I’ve never met, who’ll deliver it tomorrow, and take my check, on a bank he’s never heard of, to take care of a bunch of cows that neither of them will ever see again.  And that’s a handshake deal in the West.

            It’s all my fault.  I’d been working a consulting job out of town all winter, and left the ranch to my hired man. 

            He done just as I taught him to do: give those cows all the hay they will eat. 

            But somewhere along the line I had miscalculated.

            Rather, my spreadsheet had miscalculated.

            Actually, my spreadsheet had calculated correctly – from data I had entered incorrectly.  We were now critically low on hay.

            On my say-so, my regular suppliers had sold all their hay to other customers.  They had none left for me. 

            I cast a wider net.  Hay was sold out all over Montana.

            On a tip from a neighbor in a similar situation, I tried CraigsList Eastern Idaho – and connected with a fellow in Rexburg, Idaho.  He’d lined up a trucker - and tomorrow we’ll have enough hay to feed our cows until green grass.

            I lead a charmed life!