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Monthly Archives: June 2024

All the pretty horses

26 Jun

Alejandro’s horse in the Badwater Pasture

I always tell people “We’re a horseback outfit.” We do have a whole cavvy of pickups, four-wheelers, and even motorbikes. Still, we raise cattle and sheep in the mountains, and horses are an essential part of our crew. We raise some of our horses, we buy some domestic horses, and almost every year, we buy several “wild horses” which have been gathered by the Bureau of Land Management and placed at Wyoming’s Honor Farm, where inmates work with the horses. While the program is designed to gentle and train horses, its real goal is to rehabilitate men. The horses, in various stages of training are offered at auction. This is different that the BLM’s program of allowing qualified people to adopt untrained horses. The auction is an event. After going through security, buyers talk to the inmates, who are showing their horses. The auction follows with good money bid on these horses.

We also ride domestic horses, some of whom we raise as colts from our mares. Some we buy. We even have several that we’ve brought down from Canada. We employ these horses to help us care for our cattle and sheep. In the summer, our livestock go onto grazing permits in the Medicine Bow and Routt National Forests. We tend to the cattle every day on horseback. We are keeping them on a carefully planned rotation, and we don’t want them lounging in riparian areas. The predators–black bears, mountain lions, coyotes; and now in Colorado, wolves–are a growing threat. Since most of our deer and antelope, who also summer on the forest, died in the severe winter of 2022-’23, the predators are more likely to prey on livestock. Right now their numbers are not in balance with the prey species. All this means that the horses are a valuable part of our management.

Of course, the horses are also essential to the sheep operation. Summer and winter, the sheepherders tend their charges on horseback. The country is rough in terrain, so horseback is definitely the way to get around.

Rhen and Eamon ready to go

Chandler and McCoy, roping calves at branding

Tiarnan on his adopted wild horse, Jameson. That’s Smalls in the back.

distinctive neck brand on adopted wild horse

Cerilio with his adopted horse

Leo with DJ, who’s certifying a past horse adoption

 
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Posted by on June 26, 2024 in Family, Folks, Folks who help us out, Horses, Peruvian sheepherders

 

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Another docking in the books

17 Jun

ewes in the pen, waiting their turn

We have a lot of baby lambs in the ground. Just as night follows day, docking follows lambing. Docking is important. Sheep are born with long tails. If the tails are left long, and the sheep has diarrhea, which they inevitably will sometime in their life, flies are drawn to lay eggs, leading to maggots. A maggot infestation can quite literally kill the sheep, and it’ s a miserable death. Maggots can be treated with spray, but it is a terrible process and doesn’t always work.The alternative is to dock the tail on the young lamb. Docking the tail is only one important task to ensure the future health and happiness of the lamb.

Since we are docking the lambs of several hundred ewes at a time, it is quite a process with all hands on deck. We have a fairly narrow window–around two weeks to get around 6,000 lambs docked, healed and ready to trail with their moms. We have a portable set of corrals, which our crew moves to the next site at the end of each docking day. The corrals are set up in a funnel shape. Each bunch of ewes and lambs are herded into the wide part, which narrows to a series of pens. At the bottom of the funnel lies the lamb pen. In the pen behind, the lambs are plucked and set into the lamb pen, leaving behind a pen of only ewes. Our intrepid crew then forms an assembly line, with lamb carriers presenting the lambs to be earmarked, castrated if the right parts are there (we are using rubbers this year), vaccinated, the docked docked (again we are using rubbers), and finally, stamped with a paint brand. Each band has a unique brand–either a Ladder or a Banjo, depending on which summer grazing permit they are headed for–each in a distinct color. Next it’s the ewes’ turn to be stamped with a fresh paint brand and counted out the gate. The ewes and lambs “mother up” in the open pasture outside the pens.

Over the years, we have utilized various practices. For decades, the male lambs were castrated in the traditional way, with the shepherd snipping off the end of the sack, then drawing the testicles out with their teeth. They are in no way “biting” which actually wouldn’t work. In some ways this is the most humane method, because it’s “one and done.” With rubbers, the tight band cuts off the circulation, which is briefly more painful. In both cases, the wound is sprayed with fly spray, as is the tail area. In both cases, the lambs are soon running around, calling for their mothers. Each lamb receives a shot to guard against tetnus and “overeating” disease. The herder leaves them be for a few days, while watching for the ever-present predators.

By the third week in June, each bunch is staged for the trail to the National Forest grazing permits in Wyoming–the Medicine Bow, and Colorado–the Routt Forest. These trails take three days to ten days, depending on the distance to the permit.

Meghan and the crew bringing up the sheep

McCoy, Samuel and Anthony on the assembly line

German with Christina vaccinating

Another assembly line

McCoy and Maeve, ready for lunch

 

Counting out the ewes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
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Posted by on June 17, 2024 in Animals, Dogs, Events, Family, Folks, Folks who help us out, Friends, Peruvian sheepherders, Sheep

 

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