RealRanchers.com

Week 8

Monday, Randy and I put mineral out for the cows in the Wyoming forest. In the process, we found that there were neighbors’ yearlings in one of the pastures that we would soon be utilizing. We came back up with horses and pushed the fifteen head back into their own allotment.

Tuesday, we rode in the Colorado forest and sorted some pairs from a neighbor’s allotment.

Wednesday, we moved cows from the bottom of Upper Big Gulch West to the top. On the way back to the house

Thursday, we rode up on the Colorado forest, up Box Creek, looking for cows staying close to the water. Luckily, we did not find any cows. After that, we sorted more cattle out of a neighbor’s allotment, whose fence was extremely poor, and moved the cows on Dudley creek farther up the mountain.

Friday, I mostly helped in the kitchen and then went for my first day off to the Cheyenne Frontier Days for Saturday.

Sunday, I returned from Cheyenne just in time to pick up bales out of one of the fields to finish off the week.

I hope you all have had a great summer so far!

Brittany

Week 9

Hi everyone!

Monday, I went up the bottom of Upper Big Gulch West to push the cows off of the bottom of the draw but, luckily, the cows were already at the top. After I got back and had lunch, I went straight to raking.

Tuesday and Wednesday, I raked all day.

Thursday, a big group of us went to Green River to pick up posts and wire that Eamon had purchased. I didn’t realize until we pulled over on the side of the interstate that it was a fence that had been replaced by a company and we were to pick it up over the 8 or so miles. It was not a bad day, just very hot and a new experience.

Friday, we moved the cows in the Colorado forest up Dudley creek again.

Saturday, I raked all day.

Sunday, we moved all the cattle from Upper Big Gulch West to Buck Camp across Battle Creek. It took some time because, the cows were scattered and it got hot very quickly. The most important part of the day was to make sure that the cows didn’t stray into the field and tramp the hay.

Well, there is rain in the forecast here, which would be greatly appreciated on the forests, but we would all like to get more hay baled before that happens. Have a great week!

Brittany.

Whew! We know it has been a long time, but after battling technology we have finally got some updates from Brittany from her time at the Ladder Ranch.(Pictures will be added as more technical difficulties are overcome)

Week 6

Hi everyone,

Well its been a very busy few weeks on the Ladder Ranch. Here is a short recap:

Monday we went up to the forest and gathered the cows that were on Dudley Creek. Panels were set up in between the two truck and trailers we had parked in a grassy area near the road. We pushed the cows against the panels and those of us on horses held them there while the cows and already branded calves were sorted off. After they were all sorted, the panels were brought around the calves. There were two ropers who heeled the calves and brought them to the nord forks near the fire. I was able to practice my meager roping skills on the very last calf. As it being the last calf, and I an inexperienced roper, everyone was in a hurry to be finished which led to Pat being kicked just below the knee, breaking the bone.

Tuesday, A group of us gathered the same cows at Dudley Creek and pushed them about five miles farther onto the forest to a leased pasture. We also cut out a Hereford pair to take to the Johnson house where the Herefords are being kept.

Wednesday, I opened the gate to heifers on the other end of the horse pasture where they were pastured. I spent the rest of the day taking mineral to the cows in Upper Big Gulch.

Thursday, the Fourth of July, we moved the cows in Upper Big Gulch to Upper Big Gulch West. We left the barn by 5:30 to move them across Battle Creek to the other side but by the time it was nine, Eamon made the executive decision to only move them to two pastures over due to the heat. The cows went well but by the time we got there, they were starting to fight it. We also roped, castrated and earmarked two calves that were unbranded.

Saturday, Eamon, his two sons and I put up the let down fence around the only side of Upper Big Gulch west that was not yet done. We also put out mineral and salt for the cows.

Sunday, I went up alone to clean up any cows that we had missed the day before. It took much longer than anticipated but accomplished my goal. That afternoon, everyone had off to the rodeo in Dixon where the kids were competing in events.

Brittany

Week 7

Monday, I helped rake hay. In the evening, Eamon wanted to pull a very small calf off of a heifer that was not supposed to have been bred as a calf the previous year. We roped the calf and after deciding that none of our horses would allow us to carry the calf, we tied it up with my rope so that it would not escape until we came back up later with a 4 wheeler. When we returned about 45 minutes later, the calf was gone along with my rope.

Tuesday, I got up at 2 am to rake alfalfa until breakfast. After that we all were concentrating on preparing for the Leopold Conservation award that was in two days. I went and found the calf in with the heifers with the 4 wheeler and roped it with a borrowed rope, to bring it back to the barn and the milk cows that we were going to graft the calf onto. I mowed yards and helped paint the rest of the day.

Wednesday, we all were finishing up projects for the party the next day.

Thursday, the Leopold Conservation Award celebration was in full swing for the day. A reception and presentations were held in the morning followed by lunch and then a tour of several places that are very critical to the Ladder ranch. It was a very nice celebration.

Friday, we went looking for three pairs on the Lidstones’s property which eluded us.

Saturday, we moved cows up on the Colorado forest. Then, I came back and put salt blocks in various places.

Sunday, we trailed some cows that were sorted out of a neighbor’s herd and left on the road to the Colorado forest. On the way up we found two more pairs, one of which we were certain had been in Lidstones only a few days before.

Brittany

Please note that we will not be posting some of the interns updates for the sake of their privacy. We ask that you stay tuned with Real Ranchers as we follow our other interns through their summer internship on Wyoming ranches.

Contributed by:
Melinda Sims, a real Wyoming rancher from Sims Cattle Company.

We are Sims Cattle Company, located in Southeast Wyoming. We operate a multi-generational ranch, with four of the five generations that have been here presently living on the ranch.

We feel a great importance on including all of our generations in all aspects of the ranch, from business decisions to everyday work. Nobody is excluded, from the youngest (age 8) to the oldest (age 84). Our ultimate goal is to create a business that is appealing to us, our kids, our

grandkids, and many more generations to come, just as our forefathers did for us. That’s not saying that we expect all generations to return to the ranch, but we hope that they desire to be here.

One of the ways that we try to make it appealing is to make ranch work fun! We are serious about getting the job done, but we also like to make it enjoyable in the process. If we’ve had a wreck moving cows (like we all do!), and it has been a rough day on the kids (ages 11 and 8), then we try

to take them on an easy move the next day, just so they have a good experience to outweigh the rough one. We don’t want them growing up feeling like it’s all hard, miserable work, even though there are days… We’d like for them to remember the fun times so that enjoyable work is an enticement for them to ranch in the future.

Another way is to make the ranch as profitable as possible. If the kids see Dad and Mom barely scraping by and not able to enjoy life, what is the draw to come back to that lifestyle? If the kids see a life that is comfortable with time for a vacation now and then, and fun family times in between, then that’s a more enticing lifestyle to want to be a part of.

We also operate the ranch as holistically as possible, conserving our land for future generations. We try to show our younger generation the importance of leaving the land better than we found it – what kids would want to come back to a run-down, wreck of a place that has a poor carrying capacity? “We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.”

Without our children having the desire and love of the land that we do, we face a future of fewer kids coming back to manage family ranches. We definitely don’t want to see our multi-generational ranch removed from production because we didn’t do our job to show our children that ranching is an amazingly rewarding career!

Melinda Sims

For more photos and other updates from Sims Cattle Company, visit them on Facebook or at http://www.simscattlecompany.com

Here is an update from Jackalyn on the past 2 weeks of her rangeland internship

7/4/14-7/11/14

This past week I continued to participate in AI-ing the cows. This happens early in the morning until about 10am and from the evening from 4pm-9pm in order to let the hot cows calm down before insemination. We had about 40 cows left by Friday who are going to be put into a pasture with some bulls. During down time, I fixed fence and was able to see the Ladder Ranch on Thursday to celebrate 2014 Environmental Stewardship Tour in Savery, Wyoming. I was happy to be invited for this event and met people from UW, WSGA, NRCS, and the O’ Tool family of the Ranch. Everyone was welcoming and I met a few of the other girls who are interning like myself. Each person had good things to say about their experiences over this summer so far and the Ranch was beautiful. I was glad to hear all the good things this family is doing and celebrate with them.

7/14/14-7/18/14

This past week I pulled out our boards in front of our water gates x3. This was a lot of work but I was able to manage it. It was kind of rainy earlier in the week, so we did some maintenance on our tractors, ranger, and vehicles. My boss, Ralph and I both had a flat tire on our vehicle to fix along with the tractor. On Wednesday, we finished our last branding of the season and only had about 35 calves. I was able to brand some of these! It was a new experience for me and a lot harder than it looks. It definitely takes some practice… Later I fixed some fences and I pushed about 70 pair from an area across a stream, around a hill, through some snow fences, and along a fence line into another pasture. I also was able to go to a family BBQ and meet some more of my boss’s family and make s’mores around the fire place.

Here is the latest update from Jackalyn:

This past week I learned about Artificial Insemination or AI-ing. I watched the process and my boss keeps the bulls sperm in liquid nitrogen container where it can stay frozen. When the cows are ready to go, the specified sperm gets put into 98 degree water to melt for 30 seconds. The longer the sperm is exposed to the air the quicker it dies, so it is put in a plastic protector on a syringe and then into a napkin. Once the cows are in heat, or have received a shot to put them into heat, they get the sperm in equal amounts to their uterus. In addition to this I helped look for “hot” cows who usually have a partner and are able to be moved into the corral. This process was done in the morning and at night so they had roughly 8 hours to relax before AI-ing could occur. If the cows run around right before or after, it decreases the success rate of pregnancy. I also checked water gates and did some work around the house.

Here is an update from Jackalyn!

Monday the 16th, I built a barbwire fence by pounding in green steel posts and stringing the bob wire 3 rows while stapling and clipping after it was pulled tight. I also helped move cows and fix a hot wire fence that we had previously built.

On Tuesday the 17th, I checked some water gates and added metal boards to help increase the flow to other places. I cleaned my boss’s house, did yard work, and cleaned out a spare bed room in the house I am staying in. Wednesday the 18th, I took down and electric fence and fixed fences in the AI patch.

Thursday the 19th, I fixed fence in another swampy area and checked on the bulls.

This concludes my week.

Here is an update for Brittany’s 4th week!

Week 4

Hello All,

Its been another very busy week here at the Ladder ranch with finishing up docking and starting to AI cows and heifers.

Sunday and Monday we docked again. We had enough people to run both Dinkum Dockers again which made the day go by a lot faster. One of the lambs had a broken leg and unlike cattle and horses, lambs can be splinted. Pepe used sage brush sticks as splints and wrapped the leg with duck tape while I held the lamb still. After it was splinted and taped, the lamb was set loose to go back with its mother.

Tuesday we gathered all the cows to be AI’ed off of the Lower Big Gulch pasture. We brought the cows to the corrals where separated cows from calves and ran the in the chute. The chute was elongated by a mobile chute with a head-catch that we borrowed from a relative of the O’Toole’s earlier in the week. This extra length allowed for ten cows to be in the chute at a time. CIDRs were put in the cows which would be pulled out a week later. The CIDRs have hormones which make the cows’s bodies think they are pregnant so when the CIDRs are pulled out in a week, all the cows should come into heat at the same time, allowing for the cattle to be AIed and hopefully conceive. We also branded about seventy head of unbranded calves.

Wednesday, I helped move pairs from the St. Louis pasture down the road to the Bull pasture. Multiple calves ran back on steep hills and refused to be turned. Once we reached the Bull pasture with the tail end of the cows, we held herd for a while allowing the cows and calves to mother up. We left the gate open so the cows who hadn’t mothered up could go back and get their calves who ran back and be trailed down another day. After this, one of the other hands and I went and fixed fence on the forest. The fence we were fixing was a let-down fence which needed to be put up but many trees had been toppled across the fence and had to be cut to allow the fence to be put up. After fixing the fence, Antonio and I stopped to check on the guard dog puppies up with the black faced sheep. We made sure the mother had food but the puppies were extremely hungry as if they hadn’t eaten for a day or so. We waited and called for the mother but she didn’t come so we moved the four pups closer to the food and gave them water. The mother eventually showed up the next day.

Thursday we gathered the heifers from across the river. We found a good spot to cross the river with the heifers but they still had to swim half the way across. They went fairly easily. We put the CIDRs in all of them and then branded the 6 calves that were there. After lunch, I went to the three day pasture with the tractor to brush beat for the rest of the afternoon.
Friday and Saturday were our final dockings. On Saturday I saw my first inverted eye lid on a lamb where the bottom eyelashes turn and grow against eye. It is very heritable and to fix it, a flap of skin is cut away from the bottom of the eyelid and when the scab forms it pulls the eyelashes out and heals that way.

Well, this week finishes up my first month at the Ladder Ranch!

The best to you all,
Brittany

Here is an update from Brittany on her 3rd week!

Week 3

Hi Everyone,

My third week has flown by in a very busy blur. Sunday, I went looking for escaped bucks again and trailed them back to the ranch headquarters. Monday, I wrangled horses in the morning and then helped to gather some cows in an upper pasture and push them to the nearest corrals. We then sorted pairs out that the mothers were to be AI’ed later on. It was kind of a gloomy day and eventually, it started raining which turned into a down pour by the time we got back to the ranch.

Tuesday, one of the hands and I went back up to the corrals to finish sorting the pairs and then gather all the cows out of the pasture that we had sorted the AI pairs out of the day before and move them all to another pasture. The cows went well for there only being two of us. As we were gathering the pasture, we found the bull who had jumped many fences and thwarted many attempts to be put back with all the other bulls over the last couple days. We were finally successful in cutting him out from the cows after he brushed up on us and were forced to use dogs to chase him into the open where we could chase him back to the corrals at headquarters.

Wednesday, I went with Eamon to the forest to take a guard dog and her puppies up to the black-faced sheep. On the way, we had to put back sheep who had gotten out through an open gate and found that we would need to come back another day with horses to get them all back and had a flat tire on the truck. After that we took salt and mineral up to the AI pairs.

Thursday and Friday we started docking lambs. Docking lambs is what branding is to calves; docking is not the only thing that takes place. All the ewes and lambs are run into a mobile corral that is more elongated with three small pens up front. As the ewes and lambs are brought to the front, the lambs are sorted off from the ewes and put into the furthest forward pen. The ewes are then paint branded and let out of the pen to graze and wait for their lambs. Once the lambs are in the pen, they are then picked up by a ‘lamb carrier’. The lamb carrier takes the front legs and pulls them down in between the back legs and wraps the front leg around the same side’s back leg so the lamb cannot kick. The lamb carrier holds the lamb like that while the male lambs are being castrated and all are being earmarked. The lambs are then placed on their backs in a ‘Dinkum Docker’ which is much like a conveyor belt. As they go down the line, they are vaccinated, have their tails docked, have a mixture of pine tar and creosote put on their wounds and finally paint branded and set loose back with their mothers.

Saturday, we gathered and pushed all the cows that were trucked from the desert at Powder Wash to the forest. They went fairly easily with no major wrecks but it saved us riders a lot of work by having three very good cow-dogs because of run-back calves. It started to rain just after we made it to the forest. Later that day I helped put mineral and salt out to the cows on Road Gulch.
This concluded my third week at the Ladder Ranch.

Best regards,
Brittany

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.

Have a wonderful week!
Brittany