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
Cows and baby calves
The cows on Powder Rim are doing a great job calving. Thanks to Casey for “going native” and tending them. Of course, I don’t know what a cow could want that they don’t have…especially fresh water!
Springtime by the reservoir
wild horses hanging around the developed water
Solar well pumping water
blessed water
Pat checking on the new babies
Cows at Powder Flat
Waiting for the green
Snow melt seeps and soaks the roots
Of summer’s bounty
finding the burrs
plenty to eat
Almost sunset over Battle Mountain
Today, we set out by air to look for missing heifers. The runway at the Dixon Airport hadn’t been plowed, but the pilot, Justin, did an amazing job of taking off and landing in quite a bit of snow in what looked to me like the Volkswagon Beetle of small airplanes. Unfortunately, in spite of several hours and lots of miles of searching, we did not find said heifers. We did see a lot of amazing country, elk, deer, antelope, wild horses, sheep (ours) and cattle belonging to our neighbors. If you see heifers with a JO brand, a red eartag and a white eartag, please let us know.
Elk hanging out on the Little Snake River, below the River Bridge
Wild horses at four o’clock (not in a Horse Management Area)
the Headquarters at Powder Flat
Here’s the Chivington Place being “reclaimed” after O&G
Eamon, as we come into the snow-covered runway
Meanwhile, back on the Red Desert, Meghan and Pepe were digging out the corn pile!
Winter sheep on the trail
The bitter cold and deep snowfall during the past week has seen critters, wild and domestic, on the move. We decided to trail our yearling ewes and old ewes from the Chivington Place to Powder Flat , where they are closer to the haystack. Likewise, the deer, elk and antelope are all on the move. Here’s some of the migrations we saw today.
Yemy heading up the county road
Yearling ewes and old ewes en route to Powder Flat
The guard dogs have their back
Yemy is keeping his adopted wild horse warm!
McCoy, Sadie and Cora moving the sheep
almost there
Feral (unadopted) wild horses on the feed line with our cows
Wild horses with the cows
Elk near Sandman Mountain
Buck deer west of Baggs
Does IN Baggs
Some of several thousand antelope on the move
Cows and calves in the Lower Meadow
It’s that time of year when we bring in the livestock–the cows and calves, the ewes and lambs–the time when we finish our summer’s work and prepare for the winter season. We sell most of the calves, and send many of the cows to less snowy pastures for the winter. Some of the cows will go to our friends’ ranch near Laramie (where the snow is horizontal rather than vertical), Some will go to Nebraska. This means we bring them all in to the Home Ranch, work them, and load some of them on trucks.
First, we need horses
Ready to bring them in
And we need a crew–Eamon
Meghan and Peruanito
Siobhan and Taylor
McCoy checking things out
Rhen on the job
Megan and Jeff
Our neighbor John may be a belts and suspenders kind-of-guy
calf on the lookout
ready to load
Rhen supervising the truck
Eamon watching the calves
“Where ARE you?!”
There’s a whole lotta
bawlin’ goin’ on ‘round here.
Must be weanin’ time.
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