Maeve with her first fish.
Our friend, Flyfish Randy, was a recent guest. He arrived with the mission of teaching the kids to fish, preferably one at a time. Here’s photographic evidence of his success!
McCoy showing off his Rainbow trout.
Tiarnan’s fish was “this long”!
Rhen with the very fattest fish.
Belle helping the humans
Go that-a-way!
When most of the lambs are on the ground, we are faced with the next big task–docking. This is a major job which involves handling each and every lamb which has recently been born–giving it an earmark, castrating it if it is a male, judging if it is replacement quality if it is a female, vaccinating for enterotoxemia and tetanus, cutting the tail, and last, but not least, stamping on a paint brand. This operation involves a lot of moving parts with a lot of coordination of critters and people. It calls for all hands and the cook!
Heading into the corral
Bringing up the ewes
Docking crew ready to go
McCoy, with the docking crew and the Dinkum Docker
Siobhan taking a break
Rhen and Tiarnan–the happy dockers!
Tyler, German, Juan and Rafael at the docking board
German holds lamb while Kimmy castrates
Jaime putting a lamb into the Dinkum Docker
Tyler and Jaime
the multi-talented Kimmy vaccinating
Rhen branding for Pepe
Brittany counting tails
After the docking
Luka supervising lunch
Time for rest and contemplation of tails
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
If it’s March, it must be time to pregnancy test. We breed the best of our Rambouillet ewes to Rambouillet rams, thereby ensuring a new crop of replacement ewe lambs, as well as their brothers/cousins. Since purebred whiteface lambs are more vulnerable at birth, especially the twins, we pregnancy check the moms so that the ewes carrying twins can lamb in the sheds. The rest of the Rambouillet ewes are bred to our Hampshire rams. Their lambs have hybrid vigor and usually do fine with drop lambing on the range. Our friend Geri Parsons from Optimal Livestock Services comes up each March at mid-pregnancy to check the ewes and call out “single”, “twins”, “open” and even “triplets”. Meghan and her crew appropriately marked the ewes with a paint dab on their heads to signify their status for later sorting. Geri usually braves chill winds and long drives for several days to accomplish this task. Here’s some photos of this year’s pregnancy checking.
Ewes, waiting for the verdict
Pepe at the chute, Geri’s office in the tent
It was REALLY MUDDY!!!
Chris bringing up the ewes
Pregnancy testing crew–Sam the Border collie, Modesto, Maeve, Meghan, Pepe, Tiarnan, Geri, Chris
the view from Eagle’s Nest, looking east
January cake for Sharon, our neighbor Nikki, and Brian
The past few days have seen several birthdays, so we had a communal birthday party. Here is the cake that Megan made for the occasion. Nikki decided to stay home with her new baby, but her husband John came and we celebrated a combined 142 years of living. We had some discussion of the arrangement of candles.
Today, Tiarnan and I took a walk through the snow. He’s another Aquarian with a Valentine birthday.
It was a good day.
Tiarnan on a snowy day
Squaw Mountain with plowed snow
Tiarnan and the heifers
from our Christmas tree
New Year’s Eve morning dawned bright and clear. We had a huge pile of wood to burn from an old building we had taken down. We had livestock to tend, bucks to work, and resolutions to make.
Ewes on winter pasture
Adopted wild horses eating hay at sheep camp
Hampshire buck saying “Put me in, Coach!”
Bringing the bucks up the chute
The All-Girl sheep moving crew–Taylor, Siobhan and Meghan
Meghan and Pat sorting
Rambouillet ram out the cutting gate
Meghan, Siobhan and Taylor with the bucks
McCoy checking things out
Pat, with his fire-tending assistants–Seamus, McCoy, Tiarnan, Rhen and Maeve
Sharon with the fire-tending crew (McCoy un-photo bombed)
Maeve, Seamus and Meghan
Out with the old, in with the new
Horses grazing with the last sunset of 2016
Leaving the Routt National Forest
It’s that time of year again. It seems like we were just trailing the cows and calves onto the Forest for summer grazing. Our “off-date” has rolled around already. We mustered 19 horses and riders, including the six grandkids, to gather the cattle and bring them down to a lower pasture on private land. The calves are looking nice and chubby, and the cows are looking forward to weaning.
Pat with kid crew
Siobhan on Coco with Cinnamon
Cinnamon taking a break
Maeve–the stylish cowgirl
Seamus and Dot
Tiarnan and Daisy
Rhen and McCoy on the job
McCoy, Rhen and Eamon
Peanut contemplating the speed limit
Jim, looking for cows
Eamon has dogs at the ready!
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Ladder Ranch