Horse Poor

The phrase “Horse Poor” describes the condition of having more horses than you can ride, and more horses than you can feed.  Such describes the Ellison Ranch today.  But it was only a month ago we were Almost Afoot .

It all started right after branding when Buddy came up lame.  Buddy has been Ted’s top mount for several years now, and our top cutting horse.  But it appeared that his age had caught up with him, and he was “stove up” for most of the summer.

Then the buckskin mare was lame for a couple of weeks.  And finally the Kentucky Colt came in with a bad wire cut across one of his heels.  These were our three broke horses, and all of them were down for awhile.  When it was time for fall work, we had only the buckskin to ride between the two of us.

We got through with some borrowed horses, but it was a strain.  It takes lots of riding to make a cowhorse, and no one with a good cowhorse will loan him out. 

I let Ted take the Kentucky Colt to move cows one day while I rode a borrowed horse, and was sick with jealous envy to watch the pair of them glide out across the sage to turn a bunch-quitter, while I was plodding along on a “good, solid” trailhorse. 

Riding this horse helped me to understand why so many modern ranchers use 4-wheelers.  If I had to ride a horse like this to work cattle every time, I’d ride an ATV myself.  A good horse can spin on his hocks and change directions instantly; he can cross creeks and gullies, and navigate rocks and brush, he can sidle up to a gate to open it from horseback, and he can rope a recalcitrant critter.  But this horse handled as clumsily as a 4-wheeler, without the acceleration when the going was open!

It was late in the fall when Ted got away to attend a horse sale.  He came home with three horses that we considered to be green-broke.  One was such a sow that we hauled her back to the next sale.  The second was a red roan that would need some riding to make an average kind of horse.  But the third one was a good, big, solid, buckskin that had a nice rein, and real promise as a ranch horse.  We started riding him at every opportunity.

There is only so much you can teach a horse in a corral.  To make a good cowhorse takes a lot of time with cows.  We already had the bulk of the cow-work behind us for the year, with the next real opportunities awaiting us next spring during calving.  So we could only use this new horse for gathering cattle, and not for the real cow-work of sorting and cutting.

By the time we had finished our fall work, Buddy, The Colt, and the Buckskin Mare had all healed up.  And we still had the red roan, the new Copper Buckskin, and a mule running with the bunch.  As I said in my last post – “ninety-nine percent of the time a guy has too many horses, and the other one percent he doesn’t have enough”.  We are now in that 99% of the time with too many horses.

Over the next few months we may need horses only once a week.  We now have four horses between the two of us.  If they all stay sound, that equals only one ride apiece every two weeks.  We need to keep riding Buddy to keep him in shape, so we don’t have a repeat of last year.  But we also need to keep that Copper going at every opportunity. 

At twelve years old, the Kentucky Colt is at the top of his game.  We can save him for times when we need a top-notch cowhorse, and ride the others the rest of the time.  But the handle of even a well-broke horse declines within weeks if he isn’t ridden, so we can’t neglect him for too long.

So, we continue our strategy of one of us riding a greener horse, and the other on a well-broke horse.  We use the greener horses whenever the job at hand allows it, and use a solid older broke horse when we need some serious cow savvy. 

On a bigger ranch there is more riding to do, and more opportunity to both train, and to hone the response of a few good horses.  We do the best we can on a smaller place – but at least we haven’t abandoned our horses altogether.

We aren’t like my friend Pol who confessed:

            “First you buy a four-wheeler to do the irrigating, then you figure out how good it will work to run in the horses.”

             “Then one day you realize that you could be there and back on the four-wheeler in less time than it would take to get your horse in and saddle it.  That’s the beginning of the end.”

            “And then when you really need a horse, he’s so fat and out of tune that you can’t get the job done any way.  Then it’s all over”.

Almost Afoot

            The first hint of trouble had come in May - the day after branding: Buddy was very lame.

            We were all stiff and sore and moving slowly after the work of branding, but this special horse was painful to watch as he bobbed his head trying to take the weight off his sore legs.  He was eighteen years old this year – middle aged for a horse.  We hadn’t used him enough that spring to really toughen him up, and Ted had good reason to work him hard that day.  But we felt sick inside to see this great horse in such sad shape.

            Buddy was a little horse.  No, he wasn’t little – just short.  No, not short – just built close to the ground.  He was thick, he was solid; and he was determined. 

            I’d first bought him as a kids horse for a “gentleman rancher”.  He impressed me with his eagerness, willingness, drive, and personality the first time I rode him - that’s why I named him Buddy.  But he bucked off the girl I had bought him for, so I took him up to the West Boulder.

            His stature officially qualified him as a “pony”.  But height doesn’t measure heart.  Buddy had a wide, deep girth – which contained a tremendous set of lungs, and a heart.  It was almost as if he had set out to prove the world wrong about whether he was a kid’s pony or a “by God”            HORSE. 

 My Kentucky Colt is on the left, and Buddy on the right.

            And he did prove himself over the next several years as both a cutting horse and as a cover-the-country working cowhorse.  He came to be Ted’s main mount.

          
            A couple of years back - when I bought the Buckskin Mare from my son-in-law - Ted and I swapped off – alternating between one of us riding our top horse and the other riding the Buckskin.  That way the Buckskin got plenty of riding, while the other of us was mounted on a well-broke horse – to get the job done no matter what.

            She had turned out to be a good solid horse, with longer legs than Buddy.  We liked her, and had ridden her regularly.  We’d been neglecting Buddy some, and he hadn’t been used enough to be in top shape.  Now when we needed him, Buddy was aging – and a little soft.  We had used him too hard too soon, and he’d lamed up on us.

            It took a couple of months for him to heal up – and even then he wasn’t back to 100%.  Every time we had cattle-work to do he walked right up and put his head into the halter – but we were afraid to take him over north on a long ride, for fear he’d lame up again.  I had the Kentucky Colt, and Ted had the Buckskin Mare.  We didn’t need Buddy.

            But then the “Kentucky Colt” came up lame.  He’d apparently got a foot hung in some barb-wire somewhere, and cut deeply into a heel.  He’d been my #1 horse for some 5 years, and now he was down.  Buddy was still on the disabled list also.  We had fall work to do, and only one horse between us.

            And a cowboy ain’t a cowboy when he’s afoot. 

            The first big job we had that fall was working the calves.  We had to ride to the far north end of the ranch to gather the cows into the corrals on top of the mountain where we cut off the cows and gave the calves their first round of shots in preparation for shipping.

            Ted was in the same shape as our two best horses:  he was still recovering from his impalement on the balewagon.  But Ben and Darin came up to help, as well as Sasha.  Ted drove the pickup to the top of the mountain and trailered Buddy.  Both of them could stand a little riding, and they would be a help in the sorting. 

            I rode the buckskin for that affair.  She was a fine horse for the gathering, but still hadn’t made a sure ‘nough sorting horse.  She did well for me, though, as we took each sort from Darin and Ben, and turned the calves into the catch-pen or the cows out the gate.

            When the time came to bring the cows down off the mountain, Ted was able to borrow a horse for the trip.  He didn’t need a good horse for that job.

            A week later we had a few strays to gather.  Ted took the Buckskin one way and I rode the borrowed horse the other.  Again, it doesn’t take much horse to gather or trail cows.

            And Ben was there on his horse to help gather the cows and sort off the replacement heifer pairs.  I rode along on a four-wheeler to open the gates while Ben and Ted handled the cattle.

            But I needed a real horse to sort off those heifer pairs, and Buddy was traveling good again.  I saddled him up.

            It was a short afternoon’s work to cut off 25 pairs – and Buddy did his share!  Of course he’d have done the job if he was missing one leg – but he was having fun and didn’t seem to be hurting.

            The next day we shipped calves.  It was a short gather from the field across from the shipping corrals.  Ben helped Ted with the gather.

            The main job was to sort off the cows from the calves, and my two sons did most of the work.  I used Buddy only to turn the cut coming from them – either a group of cows or a group of calves – out the appropriate gate.  He handled the job well, and we finished the job a half hour before the semi arrived.

            A few hours later he was up to going after an old cow that was destined for the auction.  In fact, when she blew past both horses he put me up for a throw and he handled the rope until we got her into the corral.  But the next day he acted just plain tired when we did the last bit of sorting.

             

            Ninety-nine percent of the time a rancher has too many horses.  The other one percent he doesn’t have enough.

            One horse is enough for a modern cowboy – most of the time.  But no one horse can do everything well: covering the country, pasture sorting, roping, corral sorting.  It is best to have a couple of different horses for different jobs.

            And every horse gets over-used or goes lame sometime in his life.  As Harry Yeager told me years ago: “You can’t keep camping on the same horse.  You never know when you’ll need another horse.  You always have to keep another horse hard.”

            The following weekend, Ted went to a horse auction where he bought three new horses.  Because:

            A cowboy ain’t a cowboy when he’s afoot. 

           

Working Cows

We worked cows yesterday – another major event for the year.

It began on Tuesday afternoon with gathering them all to the weaning lot for an overnight stand without feed.  In the morning we corralled them and began running them up the chute to the squeeze, where we pregnancy-tested, vaccinated, poured, bled, and tagged them.

Pregnancy testing is done by rectal palpation.  Although I have done that myself in the past, this year we used the veterinarian.  He donned a long plastic sleeve to accomplish the task of inserting his arm in the rectum and feeling the uterus through the rectal wall. ( For those of you who are interested, there is a YouTube of that too:           

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yR-mmhRytVw

His next action was to bleed each animal.  Because there is a disease called brucellosis that is common among the elk and bison in Yellowstone Park, we must bleed our entire herd every third year and send the sample off to a lab to check for the disease in our cattle.  That entails taking a 2cc sample from each animal – drawn from a vein in the underside of the tail.

Each of those blood samples is keyed into a handheld computer, along with the herd tag number, a small metal tag, and an Electronic Identification Device button, which are all affixed to the ears.

Along with that are the administration of an anti-parasitic – poured along the pack – and a vaccination for Leptospirosis Pomona  - another reproductive disease.

This contraption is called a squeeze. The front closes on the neck; there is a tailgate behind; and the sides close in to immobilize the animal while we perform all the various operations.

 

Note that my side is a bit dirty.  I had been helping load the chute, and was kicked by one cow and knocked down in the “mud” by another.

Most of the work of pushing cows up into the chute is done ahorseback by my son Ted.  But the cows were more resistant than usual on this day, and I went in afoot to help him a couple of times.

 

 Here I am applying the EID button.

Today we were ahorseback all morning sorting all the cattle in different directions:  First we sorted off the cows that had not conceived – the “drys” – and put them in the corral.  Next we sorted off the yearling heifers, to throw in a hayfield with the heifer calves that we had kept for replacements.  Then we cut out a group of 11 and 12 year-old cows that were getting too old to keep on a mountain ranch.  These will be sold at auction next week as “short term” cows, to someone who has better feed and flatter country on which to run them next summer.  The balance of the cows are the main herd, which went back out to pasture.

And thus finishes up the cow work for this year.

Shipping Day

Tuesday was shipping day – the big paycheck for the year.

Ours is a cow/calf operation:  We run a herd of cows year-round, feed the dry cows through the winter, calve in the spring, and sell the calves in the fall.  From here they go to a feedlot in Iowa to be fattened for slaughter.

The shipping process began several weeks ago when we gathered the cattle from summer range into the corrals at the top of the mountain to pre-vaccinate the calves for a collection of respiratory diseases lumped into the nebulous phrase "shipping fever".  The next step, three weeks later, was to again gather the herd from the summer range on top of the mountain and trail them down into the fields along the river.  On Monday we ran the herd into smaller lot from where we cut out the replacement heifer pairs.

These cattle we cut out on Monday were the better half of the heifer calves, along with their mothers.  These heifers will be kept over and grown out to replace older cows as they leave the herd.  Since they won’t be shipped off the ranch, we cut them out of the herd early, and move them to a different field so we don’t have to deal with them on shipping day.

I ordered a truck for 10:00.  Ted and I – and of course the dogs - headed out ahorseback at 8:00 to gather the main herd from the 360-acre pasture and into the corrals.  The next task was to sort off the cows, leaving only the calves. 

 As useful as my dog is in gathering the cows, he is even more useful in the corral.  He stays close behind my horse as I sort off a group of cows, then comes out to take my cut on down the alley and out the gate - giving the cows some real incentive to keep moving, and saving my horse and I a lot of steps.  When the truck arrives, Max works the outside of the chute, reaching through the slats to grab at the ribs of any calf that hesitates to go into the trailer.

The first truck takes the calves into the shipping corrals in Big Timber.  There they are sorted and weighed, inspected for brands and health, then loaded into long-haul trucks for the trip to Iowa.

The shipping corrals  in town are a beehive of activity during the fall.  At any given time there may be a dozen each of semis with their pot-bellied stock trailers, pickups with their goose-neck stock trailers, and various other vehicles transporting buyers, brand inspectors, veterinarians, and ranchers.  There may be 1000 calves being unloaded, sorted through the various pens and alleys, inspected, and reloaded for the trip to their new homes.  Hundreds of thousands of dollars changes hands on any given day.

The price for calves is up from last year’s $1.35 per pound to $1.46  per pound.  And weights are up this year by 25# per head from last year.  It was the driest summer for years, but while grass quantity was poor, quality was much better than last year.  

 

And wolf activity was not apparent in the cows this fall as there was last fall.  (We did lose a cow to bears, however.)

With shipping and weaning just behind us there is music in the air:  25 heifer calves in the corrals are still bawling for their mothers, and a bunch of despondent cows out in the pasture are bawling for the calves that were taken away in the truck. But in a couple more days the silence will return to the West Boulder - except for the occasional gunshot from elk and deer hunters.

Ahorseback

I’ve spent more time ahorseback this week than is acceptable to my aging body.  We had taken in 65 pasture steers for the summer and they are due to ship on Saturday.

We are primarily a cow/calf operation – maintaining a year-around herd of cows that give birth in the “spring”, and whose calves are sold in the fall.  Our cow numbers are down in relationship to our grass, so I took in some pasture cattle for the summer in the form of yearling steers.

Yearling cattle are rather like teenage humans: they are herd animals, and they like to venture out and run a little wild.  If there is any weakness in a fence, those yearlings will find it, and they like to run and explore.  With shipping date approaching, I made a couple of rides in outlying pastures to look for strays.

On Monday I made a three-hour ride through the neighbor’s pasture to the west.  It is a few thousand acres with deep ravines and patches of heavy timber.  My “Kentucky Colt” and I made some dozen miles – much of it at a long trot – but didn’t find any steers.  We DID hear some elk bugling in the heavy timber, however.

On Tuesday I gave the “colt” a set of new shoes, then took the buckskin mare downriver and brought in some 25 head of cattle that had strayed into the neighbor on the east.  By Tuesday evening I was stiff and sore.

(It doesn’t seem like that long ago that I spent the fall riding for a big outfit south of Cascade, Montana.  For a full month we were ahorseback from before daylight until after dark.  But I am 17 years older now, and don’t spend enough time ahorseback to really get hardened in.)

Today - Wednesday - we gathered the 600+ acre Sick’em Creek field to the corrals on top of the mountain.  There we cut out the yearling steers, then trailed the remaining cows and calves on north to our last field of summer range.  The steers were trailed some three miles down off the mountain and thrown onto a hayfield.

We did more sorting in the afternoon in the hayfield “around the grade” from the bunch I’d brought in from downriver the day before, and pulled a few more steers from the bunch in the small field below the house. 

We’re still eight head short.  I’ve no doubt that they will show up later in the fall when we get calls from the neighbors reporting that they have ___ head of our yearlings in their corrals – cut out when they worked their cows.  We will likewise have some of their cattle mixed in with ours, and we will load up the strays in stock trailers and trade them out.

I won’t deny that I enjoy it, but all that riding and shoeing in three days is hard on an old body that hasn’t spent much time ahorseback through the summer.  And then it is back to farming and to re-staining the house, until it’s time to gather the cattle again for fall calf vaccinations.