Ah, Straw...

          If you stop to think about it, the survival of a newborn calf is a miracle.

          After living for 9 months in a zero-gravity, fluid-filled, temperature-controlled environment with his nutrients automatically provided through an umbilical cord, a calf is suddenly and forcefully expelled onto cold, hard ground.  Within minutes he is up on his legs and searching for the new source of his nutrients – his mother’s udder.

          A human baby has a similar experience of expulsion – but he is born into another temperature-controlled environment, where he is lovingly caught in a warm blanket, and delivered directly to a breast. 

This human baby can go nowhere on his own for months!  He is carried from one place to another; picked up often and held to the breast (or a damned rubber nipple thrust in his mouth) multiple times a day; he lives indoors, and is covered by a blanket.

It is 30^o today in Montana, with 6” of fresh, wet snow.  And yet that calf hits the ground, struggles to his feet, and finds a teat.  Once he is dried off and has a belly full of milk, he is good to go.  In two days he can outrun a man afoot.

If the calf has a good mama, she immediately goes to licking off that months-old slime that permeates his haircoat, and she stands patiently while he searches up and back along her underline until he finally connects.  The job of the cowboy is to assure that every calf is successfully expelled, licked off by his mother, and finds that life-giving fluid.

But the title of this piece is straw.

Most of you know that hay is forage that has been cut, dried, baled, and stored.  It is harvested in the summer when there is an excess, and is spread out in the winter when there is a dearth.

Straw is slightly different.  It is the stalk of the plant which is harvested for grain -usually wheat, barley, and oats.  This is cut in the fall after the plant is mature and has turned yellow.  The valued part of the plant is separated in the ‘combine’.  The grain is hauled one way, and the remainder is baled up as straw.

While good hay may be as high as 15% protein, straw has had its primary nutrient package removed.  Straw is likely to be around 5% protein.  It’s not particularly good feed.

In the winter, we put out straw when the temperature drops below zero.  The cows eat it, and the inefficiency of digestion helps keep them warm.  Whatever is left on the ground helps to insulate their underside.

In the spring, we put it out for the purpose of keeping the cattle up off the cold, wet snow and mud.  The cows find it quickly.

What is amazing is that a 24-hour old calf can seek out that nice warm bed, and propel himself to it!

Ah, Spring!

          I have mentioned before that “Spring” is pretty fickle in Montana.  It can be 65 above or 10 below on any day between the first of March and the first of June.

          On the ‘official’ beginning of spring this year, it got to 55^o.  A few days later it is 30^o with a fresh 6” of wet snow.

          Last week we began calving in earnest, and cut in some 40 head of heavies to the calving field.  Today we began turning out those new pairs into a bigger field where they can maintain a more adequate “social distance” to avoid an accumulation of mud and manure, and to minimize transmission of disease.

          There were 19 pairs in this first sweep of the field we call “the rocks” into which we turn newer pairs soon after they calve.  We pushed these into the “bridge trap” to sort.  One calf needed to be caught for the application of a band to his testicles.

          I was riding the Blaze colt, from whom I have done very little roping.  He had been quite a challenge to break, and I still wasn’t certain about his reaction to throwing a lariat.  But he has settled in nicely, and handled well to catch that calf.

          One must be careful when turning out new pairs to be sure that every calf follows his mother across the bridge and into the new field.  We paired them out slowly and deliberately.  But most of the calves were a couple of weeks old, and were solidly following their mamas.

          Then we swung around and cut 14 new pairs out of the calving field, and into the now-empty “rocks” field. 

          Light snow was blowing in our face the whole time, but the temperature was hovering around freezing – not particularly unpleasant weather.  Two cows were obviously going into labor, so we pushed them on down into the calving shed.  There’s no reason for a new calf to be born into a snowbank when we have an empty shed with a nice straw-covered floor.  It’s bad enough to be rudely thrust from a weightless, 103^o environment out onto a cold hard ground, when we can temper it with warm, dry straw.

          And we elected to spread more of that warm, dry straw out into the field for the rest of the heavies.

          There had been one calf born earlier in the day up on the hillside in the calving field.  Once a calf has dried off and had a good suckle, he can stand a lot of cold.  But there was a second cow nearby.  I called Eric.

          “It’s snowing too hard to see if that second cow has a calf,” I said. 

          Eric was just heading out to throw off the late feed for those heavies.  He soon radioed back that she had a new calf.

          I rummaged around in the glove-boxes for a pair of rubber-palmed gloves, jumped on the quad, and headed down to the shed to tie onto the sled.  The calf lay quietly in the sled, is mother followed along easily, and now we had our fourth calf for the day, safe and warm in the shed.

          Ah, spring.

Too Cold for CoronaVirus

            In fact, it’s too cold for my old bones.  But the work goes on. 

            Calving is just taking off on our ranch, with three calves born yesterday. It’s 20^o today, with a cold wind blowing snow out of the northeast.  Too cold for a horseback ride – yet we did it anyway.

            Our two-year-old heifers are out in a field across the river, and these girls are the high-risk group for calving.  We needed to sort through them to bring in the ones approaching calving – a job we try to accomplish every five days or so.

            My first stop ahorseback was back to the house - where I traded my felt hat for a wool ear-lap cap, and my insulated gloves for mitts with knitted wool liners.  Then it is a mile ride out across the bridge and upriver into that wind.  (A long trot is 11 MPH; the wind at 11 MPH; total “wind chill” at 22 MPH. 

            The heifers followed the main trail down across the gulch, but pulled up short at a deep snow drift on the brow of the gulch on the other side.  The flow was disrupted as we followed them up the gulch to the road crossing. 

            We held them up in the “bridge trap”, where we cut out the ones showing “heavy” – that are likely to calve in the next week.  There were 8 in today’s cut.

            As we sorted, I noted that although most of my toes were numb, I could still feel my big toes.  I remember rides where everything below my knees was numb.  And today the ride was all within sight of the house!

            My little dog Niña abhors the cold.  She has the short-haired blue coat of her Blue Heeler father.  But she remained right behind my horse until each time I sent her out after a laggard.

           

            On the return trip to their pasture, the heifers piled on down through that snowdrift on the brow.  And the horses picked up a lope after we dropped the heifers home and turned back toward the barn.  They chose to climb back up through that snowdrift - rather than take the longer, easier way home – and we let them.

            I read in my newsfeed that most of the US is shut down.  The governor of Montana has closed the schools, restaurants, and bars.  My wife reports the shelves of the local grocery stores to be scant.

            Looking out my window, however, I see none of this.  There is food in my refrigerator, freezer, and pantry.  There are still two rolls of TP in the closet, with a roll and a spare in each bathroom.  My discard pile has enough newsprint for months more.

            The price of live cattle is down $20 per hundred-weight – but the price of “boxed” retail-ready beef is UP $20!  People are suddenly buying less from the restaurant trade and more from the grocery stores – just as they did in my childhood.

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.

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.