WSGA Rangeland Summer Intern Tyler Flatt has his hands full at the Ladder Ranch. Only one week into his summer job, he has been busy helping out with many different aspects of ranching.
This week has been a very busy week. On Sunday, we had to get all of the hay out of the meadows so we could turn the irrigation on. Between 6 people it took all day to do that and even then, we did not get done with everything.
On Monday, I got put on a new project of putting a new roof on a ranch house. We got all of the old tin and tarpaper off of the house. Tuesday I helped with the sprinklers and the irrigation. After we turned the sprinklers on we noticed a lot needed to be worked on so we shut them off and fixed them. After this I spent the rest of the day walking the stream and clearing out debris and blockage. Wednesday and Thursday were both spent on the roof. Between the two days we got all of the new tarpaper on and ready for the new tin.
On Friday, I spent the morning fixing fences so we could put cattle in them and in the afternoon, we started putting tin on the ranch house. Saturday, we had a big branding party. We gathered around 350 cow/calf pairs and sorted them by lunch. After lunch we started branding. It was fun for a while but then everyone started getting tired and we had to push through to get the others done. In the end I believe we branded about 320 calves. That was a hard day. Overall, it was another great week at the Ladder Ranch and I look forward to what next week has to offer.
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