Category Archives: Horses
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
An existential question regarding Siobhan
Is Siobhan dressed for Coronavirus?
. . .or trailing yearling ewes up the highway on a cold April day?
Ace-in-the-Hole, Powder Wash
horses, ready to go
Today, we gathered, trailed and sorted cattle in the Powder Wash. It was a great home-schooling experience for Siobhan, Tiarnan, Rhen and Seamus (helping but camera-shy!). We were joined for a time by three young mustang stallions, evidently kicked out of their herd and looking for friends.
Siobhan, home-schooling
Tiarnan and Dot, one of his home-school teachers
Meghan and Siobhan
heifers, Megan and Rhen
Eamon sorting the heifers
sorting crew, Powder Wash
Cows and heifers trailing up the Powder Wash
Welcome to the world, Emma!
The horse herd welcomes Emma
This morning when we checked the horses, we found that Sarah has a brand new colt! Sarah is a great kids’ horse, so Tiarnan and Rhen were very excited to visit Sarah and her baby. She has a filly, born on my grandmother Emma Terrill Salisbury’s birthday, so of course she is named Emma.
Tiarnan and Rhen checking out Emma
mealtime for Emma
Tiarnan and Rhen opening the gate
There’s no place like home
Home at last!
We brought the ewe lambs (coming yearlings) home this week from their winter quarters on the frozen beet fields of Wyoming’s Big Horn Basin. You can see their dirty faces from rooting sugar beets out of the ground. The white-faced Rambouillets look like smut-faced cross-breds with the dirt on their noses. We unloaded them at the Chivington Place, where the snow has finally melted enough to bring them home and allow them to graze. We hope to bring the rest of our ewes back to our country soon. We are still waiting for snow to melt on their BLM grazing allotments.
Off the truck and onto the Chivington Place
unloading
Looking for grass, not beets
Jesus keeping the lambs together
Jesus and the lambs
Stuck
Today, Siobhan and I were on a routine drive, all within a mile of home. when we got very stuck. We were checking the horses and the cats. We followed the tractor’s tracks. Alas, we have had approximately two feet of new snow in the last couple of days, and it was actually warm. It was, by any measure, a bluebird day. This meant that the frozen trail, packed by the tractor, was mushy. Sure enough, we sunk into what I thought was a soft drift, and, ahem, spun out and became inexorably stuck.
Siobhan recalled that when gathering cattle from this meadow in sunnier days, her phone had service. I pointed out that we were close to home and could walk there in probably 15 minutes. She convinced me to walk a few hundred yards, find cell phone service, and call home for a tractor rescue. Soon Wilber, bless him, came with the tractor to pull us out. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it might be, as we got stuck four, count em’, four more times. Finally, with a lot of plowing and pulling, we were on our way to check on Eamon and Megan’s cats, who were very glad to see us.
Bear in mind that it was 44 degrees, and we were within an easy walk of home. It was not comparable to the time that Siobhan and Pat were stuck overnight on the Red Desert, with only gritty M&Ms to sustain them. Siobhan and I did spend three hours of quality time together, and the cats were really happy when we showed up!
Siobhan finding cell phone service
the horses
Wilber to the rescue
plowing out the path
Squaw Mountain from the Lemmon’s Meadow
Another tough winter (continued)
Ready for the trucks
Here’s more photos from sorting the sheep, Who will head north for the winter and who will stay at Powder Flat? The ewe lambs and the younger ewes go to sugar beets and crop aftermath near Burlington. The older ewes and peewee lambs will receive special care at our Powder Flat ranch.
bravely guarding the sheep
Here’s the truck!
heading up the alleyway
Eamon and Ned, the brand inspector
Seamus in the chute
Seamus and Oscar
horses, sheep and cows, oh my!
The long journey to the wintering grounds
Ewes coming to the road
Most years, we set out on the sheep trail to the wintering grounds on about the same date. It is usually about a five- or six-day trail from our late fall pasture at Badwater to our winter grazing permits in the Red Desert. We leave around Thanksgiving time–grateful that the ewes have come south on the same trail in the spring, met the shearers. trekked to the lambing ground, borne and raised lambs, grazed on the forest, trailed back to the Home Ranch corrals, weaned their lambs, and now head north to winter pasture. It is usually a time when we can take a breath. We pray that the winter is not too hard, that the dry grass is enough to sustain the ewes, and then the rams, as the cycle begins anew.
following the tractor
This year, back-to-back blizzards hit soon after the first two bunches of sheep set out. Some days they have been stranded on the trail and it has been all we can do to reach the sheep and the herders with supplies. The Interstate has been closed, with multiple wrecks and even some deaths. We crossed two bunches in between storms, but have struggled to move them north, breaking trail with the tractor. The weather has paused between storms, allowing us to make progress. We are grateful that the storms have not been unrelenting.
We had to turn south with the last bunch. Their winter pasture on Chain Lakes is snowed under, and we’ve found another, more open, allotment to the south and west. We are trailing down the highway, which must confuse the ewes, whose instinct and habit is to head north. Since we are on the highway, and not the cross-country trail, we flag, fore and aft, to slow the oncoming traffic. Locals are also not used to seeing livestock on the road this time of year, and non-locals are mostly interested to see the sheep, the dogs, the herders and the family members.
The sheep north of the interstate are still struggling to get to Cyclone Rim. They have finally made it to a plowed road, but it is slow going due to all the trucks stuck as they try to reach the energy development in the same areas.
Eamon and Guillermo bringing up the sheep
almost to the gate
Eamon, ready to trail
Wagon, waiting for the day
View from the rear flagger
Wilber and Guillermo putting in at the 18 mile marker
Ladder Ranch
