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.
This week we continued to irrigate with the side rolls and pivots. We shut one pasture off completely so that it could dry for swathing. The grass has kept growing and has reached 4 foot high in some places. On Thursday evening, the new pivot shut down and we were unable to get it started again until the next morning. It was very puzzling, but we think that the pump was shut down because it got too hot (a combination of heat from operating and the ambient air temperature). We installed some 6” pipe to replace an old 4” line that fed a section of gated pipe in one of the pastures. I had never worked with gated pipe prior to this, so it was a learning experience. I learned how to install new gates and also how to repair the pipe itself.
The highlight of the week had to be the amount of time that I spent in the saddle. I got to help teach the neighbors about the practice of herding cattle on horseback. We only moved two bulls, but it was a good beginning session. I took a ride on one of the horses here on the ranch that needed some work. He had not been rode much and needed a good workout. I gave him the workout, and I got one too! Later that day, I worked with a cowboy friend of the Perry’s to identify and cut out heavy cows in a herd. In the process, he gave me a few pointers about moving cattle, especially when herding one animal at a time. I also got the opportunity to rope calves at the branding on Friday. We did about 39 head, using horses and nordforks. I had never been around nordforks, so it was good for me to see what they were like. I personally think that wrestling the calves is better because there is no equipment on the ground for the horses to get tangled up in and the riders can go try for another calf in the pen instead of waiting until the calf is branded. It was the first time that I had roped off a horse, and I didn’t do very well! But I did get a better idea about how to throw a heel loop and what to look for when taking a shot at a calf. I am very hopeful that I can improve my roping skills over the summer.
I have also kept busy doing some mechanic work and fencing around the ranch. The days are growing warmer and the hay is practically begging to be cut!
It was another full week here at the E BAR U Ranch, from turning out bulls to finishing up branding. The decision of when and what bulls get turned out to the cows can make or break an operation. Bulls are turned out in a certain manner so that the operation will be calving during their desired window, as well as staggering the heifers and cows so they are not all calving at the same time. Along with when bulls are turned out, it is very important to determine which bulls get turned out. This is determined by referencing the EPD’s (Expected Progeny Difference) of the individual bulls so that they fit the goals of the operation. EPD’s are scored off of a base number, for example a bull with a lower birth weight EPD such as a .3 means they would make a good bull to put on heifers because their expected birth weight would be .3 pounds higher then the base calf weight at birth. Contrast that to a bull with a 6 birth weight EPD he would make a better cow bull because he is expected to produce calves that weigh 6 pounds above the base calving weight. Along with birth weight, EPD’s consist of other factors that include weaning weight, yearling weight, milk and many more.
As summer quickly approaches we are just wrapping up our tail end of the branding season. Here at the E BAR U heifers get branded differently than steers, also steers get an ear tag while heifers do not. The reasoning for this is better and easier identification of sale animals and easier marketing of cattle. The heifers receive the brand of a cow because that allows for the replacement heifers to be chosen and kept without adding another brand. One other very interesting thing about the E BAR U is that bull calves are banded at birth so they do not have to be castrated during branding. This has proven to save time as well decrease stress on the bull calves.
Jedidiah Hewlett is learning the tricks of the trade at the Perry Cattle Company. He’s only one week in, but has taken away a great deal of information already, including doctoring calves, financial matters, and irrigation methods. Here’s all of the details of Jedidiah’s first week experiences.
This week was full. We started up the new pivot on Monday and had to watch it pretty closely since it was the first time it had been run with water in it. The main concern was making sure that all the towers crossed the big ditch on the pipe bridges. One bridge ended up bending with the pivot on it, so we spent a few days manufacturing more uprights to strengthen the bridges. In the process, I got trained on how to use the plasma cutter and got pretty good at it. On Tuesday, we moved cows down the highway to another lease about 2 miles away. It was really fun to get back on a horse again since I hadn’t ridden for about a year and a half. One of the cows on the lease was pretty thin, so we brought her back and fostered her on to another cow who had lost a calf. We gave the cow rompun, or Xylazine, a sedative drug, to calm her down and put a powder called “Orphan-no-more” on the calf. The adoption worked and you would hardly know they weren’t a pair from day one! Mr. Perry and I went over their finances and I learned about gross margin analysis, financial statements, and cash flow.
Gross Margin Analysis is a quick and blunt way of comparing different options for running an operation. For example, running yearlings, running a “closed herd,” running temporary cows, running cows on shares, not running cows and selling hay, etc. Expenses are totaled for one option and compared to the income to be gained from that option. Set prices conservatively, this protects the operation if things go poorly.
The Financial Statement shows the total list of assets and the total list of liabilities. Assets include animals, land, machinery, vehicles, trailers, etc. Liabilities includes rent, loan payments, land payments, etc. These two numbers are compared at the end of the statement and the debt to asset ratio. When you divide your debt by your assets, this gives you a debt percentage. The lower your score, then the lower amount of your assets are financed by loans. The Perry’s took their ratio from 64% to 19% in 16 years. If you have a lower debt ratio, then banks are more likely to finance your venture.
Cash Flow is a large table that shows expenses and incomes for each month of the year for a variety of categories. Example: income from calf sales, hay sales, cattle sales, other. Expenses incurred by machinery, animals, cost of living, repairs, loan payments, etc.
I built two electric fences underneath the new pivot to divide the pasture up for grazing. I just set one wood post where it cornered in between the wheel tracks and put steel posts along it for the rest of the way. Other than that, I have been learning the ropes about moving and maintaining the side roll sprinklers. We got all four of them running last week, as well as the two pivots. I have gotten soaked twice while working on the sprinklers, so I have started wearing my raincoat and waders pretty much any time I need to do any irrigating. The grass and alfalfa is growing really good and we should be putting up the first cutting early this year; perhaps in the next two weeks!
Pivot Irrigation on the Perry RanchMoving cattle by the road
This week I began my summer internship at the E Bar U Ranch, which is part of the SR Cattle Company near Sheridan, Wyoming. My first week was full of different events such as branding, trailing and hauling cattle. Along with the work, I have begun to learn how the E bar U Ranch runs and operates. As well as learning about the ranch, I have also been introduced to some of the hardships that this ranch faces. Some of those being water distribution, leafy spurge invasion, and prairie dogs; all these things can lead to range degradation. The most important thing that I have learned this week is how the Kane family has overcome many of these problems and how that has made them one of the most productive operations in the area. I am looking forward to the spending the rest of my summer here at the E Bar U with the Kane’s.
Hey everyone! My name is Madison Clark, and I could not be more excited to be working as an intern for the Wyoming Stock Growers Association this summer. My internship will be mainly focused on public relations and communications, so I will be doing a lot of writing and reporting for the WSGA’s news outlets, including the Cow Country magazine, newsletters, and helping run the organization’s social media outlets, blog and website. I will get to travel to events such as the Wyoming Cattle Industry Convention that will be held two weeks from now in Buffalo, the Wyoming Stock Growers Environmental Stewardship Tour in Casper, the Wyoming State Fair in Douglas and other locations throughout the state to interview members and learn their stories.
I am an Ag Communications & Political Science major at the University of Wyoming, so this internship is definitely related to something I would like to pursue as a career after I am finished with school. I have competed in rodeo for as long as I can remember, and the opportunity to compete on the rodeo team at UW is what drew me to Wyoming. I grew up on a small ranch in Southwestern Nebraska, so working in Cheyenne for the summer is striking me as a big city experience!
My first week is off to a great start, and I am really looking forward to learning more about the cattle industry, ranchers and all other things agriculture in this great state throughout the summer.
Josiah has become the “master irrigator” over these past few summer months. The past couple weeks have proved some problems with the dry and windy weather. He also got to visit his family in Rock Springs. Here is what he had to say:
Well, it was a week of irrigating, (surprise!), but I was able to work on some fence as well to mix it up a bit. The water has been slowing down quite a bit lately so that has made things a bit more challenging. It really just involves damming up the head gates a bit more and yanking more water from the creeks. It has also made things a bit quicker for me as well, because we aren’t able to irrigate as many fields at a time now. The weather has been awful all week, dry and windy and the prairie is starting to show it. My irrigated meadows are little patches of green surrounded by fields of dying grass. Heck it has even been hard keeping the meadows green with how dry it is, I’m forced to rotate the water more often or else the other areas go without water too long.
This weekend I was able to make a quick trip down to Rock Springs to see my brother, sister in-law and my beautiful niece. It’s always good to see family and it makes everything better to be there and spend time with my niece. While I was there I also found out I’m going to be an uncle again just this time to a nephew, so I’m super excited about that!
Rangeland Intern Samantha had quite an exciting week at Ladder ranch last week. She got to try to something new, while also tracking down run away cows! Here is what she had to say:
We ran into a lot of challenges this week! The root of our issues came from the cows that we put into the buck camp pasture. Almost every day this week, Nikki and I were putting cows back into buck camp because they had gotten out somewhere along the fence. Some days we found ourselves putting the cows back in TWICE! Each day we found a new hole in the fence that we had to fix. There was one spot we had to fix 3 times, where we ran all new barbed wire because the cows kept busting through the first old wire. We’re hoping to not run into any more cows being out this upcoming week!
One day, when we weren’t putting cows back into buck camp, Chad, Nikki and I went up to the Colorado forest where we moved the group of cows in Big Red Park to Silver City. The cows moved fairly well! When we got to Silver City, there was a mother cow and a calf that needed to be doctored. While we were waiting for Chad to get back with the pickup, Nikki had me practicing heeling so I could help her rope the cow while Chad gave the cows medicine. Nikki had me roping since Chad didn’t bring a horse that he could rope off of! I was okay with this because I got the opportunity to rope and caught after my 3rd loop! WOO! This was the first time I roped off of a horse!
Another day this week, Nikki and I trailed 3 heifers and 2 bulls from the house to upper big gulch where the big herd of heifers is! This little group had gotten in with the neighbor’s cattle! They moved fairly smoothly up to the pasture but we ran into a couple of issues when one of the bulls wanted to peel off and be with the milk cows that were in the first pasture that we have to go through to get to Upper Big Gulch!
Allison Harvey had a busy week on the ranch, per usual. Her mentor, Eric was out of town for the week so it was her responsibility to do the weekly chores. She had some troubles this week, but it all worked out for the best. Here is what she had to say:
The week started out with water trouble… again. It was very hot out here so we were checking water daily. There were a couple air locks in the main system at the Divide to we opened up a different pasture and turned on another well system.
I drove the sheep back out to their pasture after we separated out the wethers. The side by side broke down and I had to walk the rest of the way. Though it was a bummer because I had to walk the rest of the way and back to the house, I ended up seeing my first rattlesnake and Nieva the puppy did better herding when I was walking than when I was driving the side by side.
During the second half of the week Eric was gone for a legislative committee meeting so I was responsible for the weekly agenda. I checked the animals, fence, and water daily. I also moved the temporary fence to the other side of the waterer for when we move the heifers and bulls into a different pen. I rolled up the barbed wire for an old pasture that they’re just storing iron in. The creek from the tank overflow down by the house gets filled in every year by sticks and leaves so I dug it out.
We are hauling the ewes over to get processed tomorrow, so we sorted them out of the sheep again after marking them last week.
Ian Zerbe has had the privilege to work at two different locations this summer with the Allen family. He started the summer off at their lower ranch doing usual ranch-like activities. This last part of the summer he has had the opportunity to work along side their pack trip outfits and he really seems to be enjoying it! Here is what he had to say:
We are finally done haying! I’m up on the mountain for good now. This past week I’ve been on the trail more hours than I can count. Packing in on an overnight trip nine hours away was definitely the highlight. We packed in three empty pack horses and our two riding horses to pick up some gear for people that had been in there for a week. Our whole camp consisted of two sleeping bags, a few cans of soup, and picket and hobbles for five horses. It was amazing to spend the night under the stars of the wind river mountains. I can’t help but think about the fact that I have less than a month left here. I’ve learned more than I could describe and I feel confident that I’ve been able to help the Allens out and teach them what I know as well.
Check out the beautiful area that Ian gets to visit for pack trips!
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