Updates From Brittany- Week 2

We have been slacking a little on our intern updates, so here is 3 weeks worth from Brittany!

Week 2

Howdy!

My second week in Savery, Wyoming on the Ladder Ranch has been every bit as and more exciting than the first!

Monday, June 2, Ali, Will and I loaded up a pick up and horse trailer to go to the Powder Wash property for the next two days. Powder Wash is about an hour or more in Colorado and with much more desert and open spaces than at the ranch headquarters. The area is very similar to the desert around Big Piney but with less alkali soil, it seemed to me. The reservoirs were full and there was still green grass to be had. We gathered a little bunch of cow/calf pairs to be picked up later the next day, out of a heavily used oil-field area and moved them into some corrals. Then we split up and gathered two good sized bunches of pairs and put them into the pasture around the homestead. Will had picked up a sick calf with the trailer but before we could unload and doctor it, the calf died. Eamon joined us after a meeting later in the afternoon. The four of us spent the night in the homestead which Pat and Sharon had built onto in the ‘70s to make it a two-story house. There was no running water or electricity without a generator but other than that, the house was fully furnished and was a treat to stay in. The next morning, we were gathering the pairs by six thirty and had the lead end into the corrals before the shipping trucks had arrived. We then sorted cows from calves and strays out as well. After the two semis were loaded and headed up to pasture closer to ranch headquarters, we let the strays mother up and sorted those pairs out. After two trips with horse trailers, all the pairs were mothered up and back in the mountains. Wednesday, the Aussies and I gathered some escaped bulls and put them back in the dry lot. We then went and towed a side-by-side back from where it had died up the creek and loaded it on a flat-bed truck using the winch. Will and Ali and I took mineral out to three different pastures using the working side-by-side. Not all three of us were needed but I needed to learn where all the salt and mineral spots were for after they leave. We had to bring in the cow who’s calf died up at Powder Wash and attempt to graphed a calf on her who’s mother had died. We used Orphan-no-more which I had never used before. The graph was unsuccessful as of Thursday. Later Wednesday afternoon, we went to Saratoga to take the broken down side-by-side to be fixed and to drive back a truck and trailer that Pat had taken to Fort Collins that morning with a load of cattle to go to the sale barn. We went over Battle Pass since it was the first day it had been open. Thursday, we went and moved some cows off the forest which had crawled through the fence. One cow was just starting to calve. We also had to move the bucks which had jumped the fence too. Since it was not the bucks’ first escape offense, Ali and I trailed them back to the corrals at headquarters so hopefully there will be no more escaping onto the forest. Later in the day, we fixed a hole in the fence and brought in more escaped bulls from the dry lot corral, took the cow who had lost her calf and wouldn’t take the bum, up to the other Powder Wash cows and found three escaped dry cows that we then moved to the corrals. Friday, I helped move more escaped pairs from the forest to private property which took much longer than expected.

Battle Creek, the creek that flows through the property, has been very high and overflown its banks but I believe it has started to recede just a bit for the time being. The Ranch itself is at 7000ft above sea level.