Black cows wintering
near Laramie, munching hay–
waiting for snowfall
In the winter, some of our cows go to the balmy environs of Laramie, AKA “Laradise”. It’s almost spring, and time for the cows to come home. In a few weeks, they’ll start having baby calves, and you’ll see pictures of them on this blog. Usually, we have more snow on the ground, but the easy winter means we have plenty of hay.
photos by Siobhan
Some of our cows spend the winter months near balmy Laramie–or “Laradise” as Eamon calls it. They head down in the late fall to eat hay and hang out on our friends’ ranch for the heart of the winter. They travel to the feed, since we don’t raise enough to winter all our cows. This time of year, they head home, ahead of calving. Eamon, Megan, McCoy and Rhen put them on the trucks, and Meghan and I were here so see them unloaded.
Of course, a couple of them fell over from lack of wind.
We raise a lot of hay, and we use it all. We make big rounds for the cows who stay home and winter on those same meadows where the hay is raised. We make small squares for the sheep camps. AND we send some cows to Laramie to eat hay raised by a friend there. Now while most people don’t think of Laramie first when they are looking for a place to spend the winter, our cows like it just fine and come home fat and happy–and very pregnant.