EDITOR’S NOTE: Due to the fault of this busy editor, I didn’t get this wonderful post up in a timely manner, but it’s just too good to wait until next spring to share. So here is Katie’s Spring 2012 experience…even though it’s August. Thanks for putting up with me. – LL
AWWW spring showers!
In late May we finally had our spring drizzles, down pours and even wet SNOW. It was a very hot, dry spring.
In late winter, coming spring, it would melt, then freeze at night and all the water would not soak into the ground because the ground was frozen, so all the water just ran off all the hills and did not soak in.
Then it got really hot and dried up everything, It was dusty. Dusty in spring time?!?! WHAT THE HECK dusty in spring time!!
Ranchers do not have sprinklers all over our land and hills, so we depend on nature to water our ground. And if we don’t have water, then we don’t have grass, and if we don’t have grass, we don’t have enough food for the cows.
Chugwater‘s child labor force was comparing notes at the beef arena during the Platte County Fair in Wheatland, Wyo. They were so intent and cute with their chatter. This is our ag future.
Every wondered how ranchers get their cattle moved from place to place on those big trucks and trailers? Check out how cattle are carefully loaded onto this two-story trailer, called a cattle pot, specifically designed to safely and efficiently move them to their summer and winter homes when trailing them from place to place isn’t an option.
Last fall I had the exciting opportunity to tour the Jonah Field, hosted by our friends at Encana Oil and Gas, USA. The Jonah Field is located south of Pinedale, Wyo. It covers about 30,000 acres and has resulted in millions of dollars in tax and royalty revenues for federal, state and local funds.
We began the tour at the Sublette County Visitor’s Center. There we loaded on buses and headed to the safety office.
Sublette County Visitor’s Center in Pinedale, Wyo.The side of the building next to the Visitor’s Center. Sublette County is deeply rooted in agriculture, as well as energy. The two industries share a lot of common interests, including proper use and care of the land.Encana’s Community Relations Adviser Randy Teeuwen welcomes everyone on the tour bus.
While there, we also heard about the latest oil and gas exploration effort being undertaken – the Wyoming Normally Pressured Lance (NPL). Encana’s Randy Phillips talked extensively about these efforts, the government standards and procedures they must maneuver through and the latest technologies that will be used in the NPL to produce more oil and gas with less impact on the environment. I’ll talk more about this in another post.
Encana’s Randy Phillips talks about the Jonah Field, as well as the new Normally Pressured Lance field.
While at the safety office it seemed fitting that we go through safety training. They explained all the practices and procedures we needed to adhere to while in the field. Then they gave us some stylish safety outfits and accessories to wear. I think they were designed for the runways of Paris and New York.
Fire retardant jumpsuits for the tour“Clackers” protect toes for folks not wearing steel-toed boots. They’re also incredibly stylish.
After all the great discussion we were all anxious to get in the field. We dressed up on all our PPEs and FREs (personal protective equipment and fire retardant equipment) and headed to a Central Delivery Point (CDP). Aren’t acronyms fun?
Central Delivery PointEncana employee Jeff Strange explains the purpose of the Central Delivery Point to the tour group.
Many different natural gas wells are delivered to a CDP. Here the gas, oil and water are separated. From there the gas and oil is transported through pipelines to buyers across the country and the water (which is a natural byproduct) is used in fracking. Using CDPs helps Encana stay efficient, reduces emissions and creates less disturbance to the land.
Several wells are directed to each Central Delivery Point.
There is a meter house that is the point of custody and after the oil and gas pass by the meter it officially is owned by someone else.
The meter where the oil and gas leaves the ownership of Encana.
The tanks hold the separated oil and water.
Each well is operated off of solar panels and are monitored by computer. Employees also periodically check and monitor each well and each CDP to ensure everything is running correctly.
Each oil and gas well is operated by solar energy
We did a lot more on the tour and I look forward to sharing more in the weeks to come, so keep checking back!
SUUUMMMMER TIMMMEEEE is here!! It’s getting warm outside and it’s time to start bathing and giving haircuts to my show cows!
Bathing cows in the summer and spring is good for their hair and is also cooling to them so they eat and feel better. It also gentles them. Giving them haircuts makes there appearance look better and cleaner. They don’t look so raggy after a nice, clean haircut!
It is also good experience for me so I’ll be ready for shows and fairs. That way my clipping will look nice, clean and give that cow a good appearance.
In the spring is when I also start taking them to smaller shows and jackpot shows.
Jackpot and small shows are good experience for both me and the cows to be prepared for fairs, state fairs and big shows. That way they’ll be calm in the show ring and I can show better!
Arg! I can’t believe it’s been so long since we’ve posted something new! I have stories waiting in my inbox to be posted and shared with the world and my to-do list has finally reached normal levels…so be on the lookout for fun, new content soon!
The little calves always make calving fun and seem worthwhile no matter how tired you are or how disastrous the situation seems. When four heifers aborted in a week almost two months before calving time, it appeared to be a disaster. When the second calf was aborted, Vern came out and did an autopsy. Vern laughed and said, “You did well. You got air in its lungs because the lung floated in the formaldehyde, but the calf had probably been dead in the cow for a couple of days the way the hair pulled off.” The lab said the heifers were aborting from a mycotic infection which was caused by breathing in a fungus spore from the hay and the poison went through the heifer’s blood to the fetus.
The highlight of the disaster was Gertie.
She was only about 30 pounds when she was born, but full of life. The heifer didn’t like Gertie, so our employee, Brian, rubbed her off, gave her some milk and put her in the utility room wrapped in a blanket with the heater on. The house was her home for the next week or so. Gertie was so cute with her little ears and big brown circles around her eyes peering out from the blanket at you.
Gertie in the utility room wearing a diaper
Gertie was so weak she couldn’t stand the first day, but she would suck the bottle. Every two hours, she was hungry and she would let you know with a bawl it was feeding time. The next day, she was strong enough to stand while sucking the bottle, but she was shaking from exhaustion when she finished. Within three or four days, she wasn’t so exhausted and she would want to buck and play. The utility room’s linoleum floor was so slick she would fall down and do the splits. We put a bath mat that would not slip down for her to stand on while eating. She soon learned if she stayed on the blue rug she would not fall, so she jumped up and down in place for exercise.
Sommers Ranch employee Brian Esterholt gives bum calf Gertie a drink before going out to play.
It finally became warm enough during the day Gertie was taken to the insulted calving shed. She could then run and play for short bursts of time before she became exhausted. As she got stronger, she started going on little adventures.
She could go through the poles on the fence and under the gates. She could get anywhere she wanted without any difficulty since she was so small. When you found her, all you had to do was call her name and she would follow you like a puppy dog.
Brian would carry her back to the house at night, and she would stay in the utility room. Finally, she was able to stay in the insulted calving shed at night, but then our Purebred Herefords started calving, and Gert had to come back in the house at night. She followed you to the house, walked up the steps and into the utility room. She was glad to be back in her old home. She ran around sniffing everything and then laid down on her blue rug. Within several days, she was running up and down the steps of the house with ease.
In three or four weeks, Henrietta the milk cow calved, so Gert had a mom. Henrietta had her own calf, Gert and another preemie on her. They all ran, played and had a good time together. When cleaning out the stall, you could let Gert go outside into the field because she would follow you back into the barn when you were ready.
The first morning we had snow after Gert had been out in the shed on her own, she made a big run and buck to go outside. When she hit the snow, she stopped dead in her tracks, sucked back and sniffed the snow. That was enough of that. She went into the stall where a heifer’s calf was laying and tired to get him to play with her to no avail. She then fought the post and bale of straw.
All the calves are happy, but Gert still loves to have you visit and scratch her. She is a people cow.
This week we’re directing you over to RealRancher Ondi Shepperson’s blog to read her two latest posts. Ondi has a unique style and captures some great ranching moments and we’re honored she let’s us share her posts!
When calving heifers (female cattle that haven’t had a calf yet), you inevitably have to help one now and then. This year we are pulling a few more calves than usual, which is a bull-related issue. The bull’s genetics in large part determine calf size and the bigger the calf, the harder to calve. We aren’t the sort to wait around several hours for a heifer to have a calf, which some people do. If she isn’t progressing in a timely fashion, we like to get her in and get the calf pulled before the heifer is worn out from trying to have her baby, and the calf is exhausted from being squeezed. It’s a system that works well for us.
This heifer is having trouble giving birth so RealRancher Heather Hamilton explains why and how cattle producers step in to aide the heifer and her calf.
NOTE: Headlines have appeared recently claiming once again that red meat, primarily beef, causes cancer. Our own Wyoming Tribune Eagle printed the sensationalized headline “Red Meat Kills” on the front page of the March 17 edition. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association and the Wyoming Beef Council teamed up on a letter to the editor to tell them why they’re wrong.
Dear Editor:
I was disappointed that you lead the Saturday, March 17 edition with a sensationalized front page tagline that lead readers to a study about red meat which is both misleading and biased. I am particularly disturbed by your focus on this article when in January, a study was released that clearly shows the heart healthy benefits of lean beef, and to my knowledge, your paper did not cover this study at all. Wyoming beef producers deserve a fairer treatment of issues that so directly affect our industry and our state.
The truth your readers deserve to hear is that there is no scientifically valid reason to eliminate red meat from the diet. The one thing scientists agree on, it is that responsible dietary advice must be drawn from looking at a complete body of evidence, including rigorous, gold standard randomized control trials when they are available. The study referenced in your paper was not a randomized control trial. Rather, it was an observational study which cannot be relied upon to determine cause and effect. However there are numerous randomized control trials which have convincingly shown that lean beef, when included as part of a healthy, balanced diet, improves heart health by lowering cholesterol. Most recently, the BOLD (Beef in an Optimal Lean Diet) study showed that eating lean beef every day as part of a heart-healthy diet, could reduce LDL cholesterol by 10 percent.
Furthermore, lean beef provides many under-consumed nutrients such as potassium, phosphorous and vitamin B12 along with vital nutrients such as iron and zinc which are more easily absorbed when they come from meat rather than vegetables. If that isn’t enough to convince you, a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition found that when people ate high-quality protein foods such as lean beef for breakfast, they had a greater sense of sustained fullness throughout the day compared to when more protein was eaten at lunch or dinner. A research review, “The Underappreciated Role of Muscle in Health and Disease,” also published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, indicated that increasing daily high-quality protein intake could optimize muscle strength and metabolism, and ultimately improve overall health.
Your readers deserve to know that a 3-ounce serving of lean beef provides a powerhouse of 10 essential nutrients, such as protein, zinc and iron, for about 150 calories, on average which means they can enjoy lean beef as part of a healthy, balanced diet that aligns with the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and the “MyPlate” food guide.
The bottom line is there is strong scientific evidence to support the role of lean beef in a healthy, balanced diet and there is nothing in the study you referenced that changes that fact. Solid, gold standard research clearly shows that choosing lean beef as part of a healthful diet is associated with improved overall nutrient intake, overall diet quality and positive health outcomes.
In late May we finally had our spring drizzles, down pours and even wet SNOW. It was a very hot, dry spring.
RealRanchers.com 