McCoy, Tiarnan and Rhen have the cows under control
Tag Archives: McCoy
Lambs off to the feedlot
Lambs, ready to load
It’s time to load the lambs onto semis so they can go off to the feedlot in Pine Bluffs, Wyoming. They will spend a few months there eating locally grown corn, and gaining around fifty pounds. It is sort of like going on a cruise, only without the tugboats and humidity. Richard Drake will look out for them and determine when they are ready to become lamb chops. It makes for noisy nights around our headquarters, since we separate the lambs from the ewes the night before they load onto the trucks. It is less stress for both lambs and truckers if they are “empty”–off feed and water–when they load. When they arrive at the feedlot, Richard is ready with plenty of feed, water and good conditions so the lambs will thrive. The ewes call for a day or so. My Dad always said that it is so the other ewes will know they are good mothers. The ewes then settle down, and get ready for the winter months.
McCoy surveys the lambs in the corrals
lambs heading for the semi
Pat pushing lambs with a flag
Lambs and horses
Eamon, Jeff and Rhen bringing them up
Siobhan, Rhen and Seamus providing child labor
Grandpa Jeff Stocklin and Rhen supervise the operation
Yanush on the job
Sorted, inspected, loaded, and ready to roll.
Geri and the bucks
Each fall, we check the buck sheep for fertility and general health. Luckily, we have Geri Parsons of Optimal Livestock Services to provide her expertise. We intimately examine each and every mature ram that we have on hand to determine his worthiness to hang out with the ladies in December. Look at how green the alfalfa field is below Battle Mountain.
Tim and Jedidiah checking a ram
McCoy bringing the rams up the chute
McCoy tugging on the pulley rope
Tim, Jedidiah and Halli check out the ram
Geri teaching Sadie how to check semen under the microscope
Up the chute
Who ya gonna call?
Snake River Community Barbeque and Fun Day
Has anyone else noticed the prevalence of “Fun Day” to describe gatherings in our community–and it’s true. We in the Little Snake River Valley really know how to have fun! Right after Labor Day, we have an end-of-summer, about to plunge-into-fall-work, guess-it-will-be snowing-soon celebration. This year the Community Barbeque included a barbeque (go figure), bouncy big toys for the kids and some grown-ups, live music, an arts and crafts display, and, of course, The Mostly Peruvian Soccer Tournament. One of our neighbors donates the use of his hayfield, next to the museum, as a soccer venue. Most years, the hay is put up, and the stubble is a little stiff. This year, due to generous (some might say overabundant) rains, the field featured somewhat soggy windrows, some of which had been raked aside to allow for clear soccer fields. This year, eleven teams played. A few were turned away, after being deemed to be too far afield and too semi-pro to participate. This gives you an idea of how many Peruvians are employed in agriculture in our area and surrounding communities. This is a day that the players look forward to all year. Even though several of our sheepherders left their flocks for the day to play for our team, the Osos de Ladder Ranch, alas, our guys did not prevail. Still, a good time was had by all–truly Fun Days!
Peruvian soccer game in the hayfield next to the Little Snake River Museum
Sundog, entertaining the crowd
A fabulous quilt by Aggie Stocks on display.
Rainbow over the swingset and museum
Oso Antonio with Rhen
Kids in line for the bouncy toy, with their shoes off
Eamon on the bungee pull, with Brenden
Museum Director Leila Emmons with McCoy , Tiarnan, and the garden planted with the kids on Pioneer Day
Sally Martinez supervises the roasting of the lamb, beef and pork
Peruvain soccer players check out the Strobridge House
Rhen at the top of the slide which has terrified generations of children
Museum scarecrow
Tiarnan and Siobhan under the sunflowers
Summer Love: A.I. for the cows
Cows waiting in the Elephant Corrals
Not all of our cows find Mr. Right Bull in their forest pastures in the summer months. Some of them meet Mr. Artificial Inseminator just before they trek to the National Forest grazing permits. After studying the bull catalogs and deciding on the future fathers of many of next year’s calves, Eamon orders semen and sets the wheels in motion.The process is complicated, but the day arrives, and the AI crew arrives, and the chosen cows are ready to conceive. This allows us to use better quality bulls than we can afford to buy, and means that we don’t need to keep as many live bulls on hand throughout the year. The bulls aren’t too disappointed though. They go to the Forest with the cows, and breed those who didn’t conceive or are in the natural breeding group.
The AI techs prepare the semen
This is romantic? No bull!
McCoy and Eamon working the chute
Family labor: Georgia, Jim, Rhen and Jeff
McCoy and Megan bringing up the cows
The bull team
Ready to ride
New Event at the National Finals: Roping Children
Eamon roping fast children–Maeve and McCoy make a fast break
Docking, so far
Oscar and Avencio on the docking board
We are in the midst of docking lambs. We have to hit the “sweet spot” after the lambs are big enough to dock without too much stress, before they get too big–which is stressful to the crew, and soon enough before we trail to the Forest to recover and be ready to follow their mothers. We also have to dodge stormy days, the schedule for artificially inseminating the cows, and the imminent arrival of the wool truck.
Our Peruvian sheepherders are glad to be through most of the lambing. Now their biggest worry, and ours, is the loss of the lambs they worked so hard to deliver, to coyotes. Yesterday, we lost 10 lambs altogether in the various bunches–and that was just one day.
Docking means that we have moved the portable corrals to the temporary site where we have set up the day before. The herder has the sheep staged to go into the corrals early in the morning. We hope to do this in an orderly manner without the lambs running back and scattering into the brush. Once the ewes and lambs are in the corral, we start bringing them up in small groups, dropping the lambs into the small front pen, and paint branding the ewes in the forward pen, counting, and turning them out. We keep bringing them up in small groups until the last lamb is docked and the last ewe is counted.
On the docking line, each lamb is earmarked with our distinctive earmark. Buck lambs are castrated and the lamb carriers carefully place them in the “Dinkum Docker”–a mechanical holder which restrains them as they are vaccinated and slowly slide down to the bottom. The “tailer” sits at the bottom and sears off the tails with a hot knife. This is the safest and most humane way to remove the tails, since it is quick and leaves a clean wound. Another crew member holds the back legs to ensure that the tailer does not get kicked in the face, and applies a gooey mix of creosote and pine tar. This has antiseptic qualities and keeps the flies away. Finally the tailer flips the lamb over on his lap so that the brander can stamp on the paint brand.
The brander is often a child. It is a skilled job, since the brand needs to be in the middle of back, and stamped on without too much wasted paint. The paint is formulated to be scourable after the wool is sheared off. Pat always tells the brander that the other lambs will make fun if the brand is off-center or incomplete.
Bringing up the ewes and lambs
This lamb is happy to be on its way!
Antonio stands ready to count the ewes
Christian branding the ewes
Dinkum Docker, waiting for customers
Tiarnan branding for Pepe
Brittanny, summer intern, vaccinating lambs
McCoy, Tiarnan and Antonio on the job
Ewes and lambs after docking
Maeve, the happy docker
Father’s Day
Eamon teaching his son McCoy to brand lambs
We spent Father’s Day docking lambs. Here’s a photo of Eamon, who was cutting tails, teaching his son McCoy, 3, how to brand the lambs. As he said, “This is an investment in the future.”
Milk on the hoof
If owls are a Parliament, and crows are a Murder, our lambs so far this year are a Plethora. We are grateful for this, but it does mean that we’ve got quite a few “bottle babies.” We were spending a small fortune on lamb milk replacer. Eamon went to the auction and came home with one fresh cow and seven milk goats. McCoy decided he needed to guard them until we could get them unloaded.
McCoy guarding the milk goats
Ladder Ranch
