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
Tags: branding, cattle, Maeve, Powder Wash, Rhen, Tate, Terrill Corrals, Tiarnan, Tim
Bringing in the cows and calves
It finally stopped raining long enough to allow us to brand some calves. Clouds were threatening, but with lots of good help, we got through them. They were, as my Dad used to say, “Big enough to get ahold of.”
cows checking the clouds
Eamon watching Jeff chase the errant cow
Jeff bringing her in
Jeff and Mike watching the calves
Tags: branding, calves, cows, Eamon, Jeff, Mike, Powder Flat
It’s time to brand those calves which have been born this spring. We’ve been branding calves both in the mountains and the desert. We have our good crew of employees, friends and family on hand to help us with this endeavor.
Ready to gather: Cookie, Mike, Eamon and Karen
Siobhan and Dice
Taylor bringing in the cows
Mike and Tiarnan conferring
McCoy on the job
Pat and Cookie have a lot of irons in the fire!
Calves in waiting
Looking for the branding crew
Rhen and McCoy at work
David and Joe
Tags: branding, calves, Cookie, cows, Eamon, Karen, Lemmons Place, McCoy, Mike, Pat, Powder Wash, Rhen, Siobhan, Taylor, Tiarnan
calves in waiting
Branding season commences. We have most of our baby calves on the ground. We have to pick the right days for branding–after the calves are big enough to not be too stressed, but not so big that they will cause the branding crew too much stress. These calves have reached that “Goldilocks Moment”. In the last few days, we have branded one set of calves on the Home Ranch, and one set of calves in the desert at the Powder Flat Headquarters. We even had a photographer from the Library of Congress, Carol Highsmith, to document the great American branding. As usual, we had child labor on hand.
Nikki roping calves
Mike Buchanan, McCoy and Rhen ready to go to work
Cow and calf–at the ready
Rhen and Mara, on the job
Meanwhile, back at the Powder Flat Ranch…
Nikki holding the calf
Nikki, Megan, Mike Pierce and Jill wrestling a calf
Eamon with the irons
Mike B. and Mike P. branding a calf with help from Kate
Carol taking pictures of Mike B.
Carol with the cows
Tags: branding, calves, Carol Highsmith, cows, Eamon, Home Ranch, Jill, Kate, Mara, Megan, Mike Buchanan, Mike Pierce, Nikki, Powder Flat, Rhen
It’s that time of year. We have lots of calves on the ground, so it’s time to brand, castrate and earmark, so the calves will be ready for the rest of the season hanging out with their Moms and eating green grass.
brand goes on
JO
Brian and Tiarnan–‘rasling crew
Tags: branding, Brian, Tiarnan
Calves looking for their moms.
We have been really shorthanded this spring, so in order to get the calves branded, we had to call on every friend, neighbor and family member that we could rope into helping. I thought we might have to use literal roping to get a crew together, but in the end, enough folks showed up at each branding to get the job done. We started in early May, and finished the last branding on June 23rd. Thanks to all who helped us!
branding crew, ready to go; Dudley Creek
Eamon, Tony and Brian
Meghan and Brian practicing a marriage encounter
Raelyn and John vaccinating the calf
Raelyn and Siobhan, vaccinators extraordinaire
Iridescent testicles
Young bullhood gone awry
Gives lurking smirking cowdogs
Their testosterone supply
Peanut, Megan, McCoy, Rhen, Tiarnan and Sharon: training the future branding crew
branding the calf
Eamon with paddle
Tiarnan and McCoy with rope
Tags: branding, cattle
Our cows spent the spring on our desert ranch at Powder Wash. When it came time to truck them to the mountains, our crew gathered them up.
Eamon, bringing in the cows
Siobhan in the dust
Pat with McCoy on Plata
The calves unloading at the Home Ranch
Heading through the gate
Then it was time to brand the youngest calves.
Morgan Seigal, looking for a slick calf in the St. Louis pasture
Margaret Cogswell, Cowgirl
Tags: branding, calves, cattle, cows, Eamon, Pat, Powder Wash, roundup, Siobhan
Last spring we could hardly find suitable days to brand calves. Every day dawned cold and rainy. Each day that looked like maybe it wouldn’t rain, we had to chose between docking lambs, branding calves and fixing fence (among other things). This year is the opposite. Each day is unrelentingly warm and dry. While this gives us lots of suitable days, the weird weather has compressed seasonal work in its own way. We had to start irrigating when we were still branding. The fences are in much better shape than last year, when near record snow crushed them to the ground. The early dry up and green up, with no following rains, has meant that fences have to be in good shape for early turn out. And everyone is scrambling to take care of the early growth of feed, since it appears that not much regrowth is likely when we come back to fall pastures.
Except for the late calves, we have finally gotten all the calves branded and ready for their rotation to summer pasture on the Routt and Medicine Bow National Forests.
Bruiser on alert
The management team makes a plan
- Seamus readies the vaccine
McCoy: he can ride AND handle a vaccine gun
Family labor
Megan O’Toole, R.N.
Our crew breaks for lunch
Tags: branding, cattle, horses, McCoy, Seamus
Ladder Ranch
