Peanut and baby
Peanut had her new baby–a beautiful sorrel filly. We are asking for votes for her name.
You can’t make this stuff up
Jaime, Crescencio and Juan studying the situation
At the cookhouse breakfast, Meghan said, “You can’t make up my life.”
I had enjoyed a solid night’s sleep, so I asked her what was up. She said that she had been out int he middle of the night trying to locate a Harvest Host RV guest (another story), when she noticed lights in the middle of the hay meadow. She went to investigate, and discovered a young man who had somehow followed his GPS into the very irrigated field and gotten very very stuck. She retrieved him, pointed his really muddy self to a shower and a bed. Mind you, it was 3 a.m. It turns out that he was looking to spend the Fourth of July with his uncle, who lives in the mountains to the south and west. We mustered our crew, pulled him out, and delivered him to his grateful uncle and cousin. Just another morning on the Ladder Ranch!
Meghan assessing the stuck car in the light of day.
our tractor extracting the stuck car
Docking 2020
Bringing up the ewes and lambs
Lambing is closely followed by docking the new lambs. This means literally docking the tails, to protect against flystrike, earmarking and paint branding to indicate ownership, castrating to make management easier and to create better meat quality, vaccinating to protect health, and a look at each and every lamb for problems to address. It makes for long days, but also adds camaraderie and teamwork to our hard-working crew! A good lunch is sure to appear. No one has trouble sleeping at the end of the day
docking crew at Cherry Grove
end of the line, Dinkum Docker, Maeve branding
Pepe and Renee tailing and branding
Pepe, Renee, Siobhan
dances in dust
Eamon tossing lamb
Juan catching lamb
Siobhan and Bubba, docking
ewes and lambs, mothering up
Bull Run or the Samurai Express
Akaushi bulls t
We decided to try a new breed of cattle to crossbreed with our Angus and black baldie heifers. These Japanese-origin Akaushi bulls were located in Muleshoe, Texas (northwest). Pat, Sharon, Tiarnan and Rhen made a run to Texas to pick up them up. We stopped in Denver and Mosquero, New Mexico on the trip down. Our friends Jack and Tuda Crews have a wonderful bed and breakfast, The Rectory, in Mosquero. We were able to visit with them before heading on to Muleshoe. After loading the bulls, we made a 14-hour run home. The boys were troopers all the way! We unloaded in the dark.
Rhen and Tiarnan in Denver
boys’ boots at The Rectory
windmill near Mosquero
Tiarnan, Rhen and Muleshoe mule statue
Rhen, Tiarnan and cattle
on the road
Rhen in Muleshoe
Branding at the Terrill Corrals
Retired chute at the Terrill Corrals
My Dad, George Salisbury, and his cousin Bob Terrill, used to run cattle together in the Powder Wash country. The corrals, north of Powder Wash Camp, are still known as the Terrill Corrals. While the corrals don’t see as much activity as they used to, our family and the Terrills still brand calves in the corrals, with Bob’s son Tim and granddaughter Tate.
Tate. bringing in a calf
Tate and Tiarnan, roping
wrastlin’ crew
Siobhan and Rhen–beware the girl with the knife
Tiarnan, ground crew
Tim (who worked a lot) at the lunch wagon
Tiarnan. Dot and calves
Tate, at the Terrill Corrals
Maeve and Tate
Border collies on the job
bringing ewes up for shearing
Daughter and mother,
my right-hand canine duo—
Cora and Sadie.
Shearing, interrupted
Anthony bringing up the wooley ewes
Shearing the sheep is a challenge every year. We are dependent, foremost, upon the arrival of the shearing crew. These skilled and essential crews are more difficult to find every year. For the crew bosses, it is harder each year to put together skilled shearers and to put together sheep to shear. We are dependent upon the weather, which is capricious. This year, now, our excellent shearing crew has started a few days late, due to weather. On Friday, we were able to get in a good days’ shearing. Yesterday it rained all day. Rain is usually good—much better than drought—but wet sheep can’t be shorn. Today, we started again, and managed to get through 50 head. A brief but fierce storm came through, and stopped us. So tomorrow, we try again. We have a lot of ewes who need shorn before lambing starts May 10th or so.
Ciro shearing
the first shorn ewe
wooley ewes, shorn ewes
shorn ewes
Oscar and the crew
free at last!
water
storm clouds
Ladder Ranch
