SEPTEMBER 28, 2013 – The kids are back in school and
enjoying their classes, but also enjoy the weekends they get to be home, here
on the ranch.
The calves we sold through the auction
at
Butte, Montana
a couple weeks ago did fairly well, considering they were only 5 months
old.
The biggest steers averaged 480
pounds and brought $1.78 per pound and the smaller steers averaged 420 pounds
and brought $1.82.
The heifers were
smaller and brought $1.88.
That night it
rained, the first real rain we’d had for quite awhile.
The heifers and 3 bull calves we weaned that
day got cold and wet, but didn’t get sick.
The didn’t want to graze the wet grass in the little pasture below the
barn, so we fed them some hay in tubs to keep them from wasting it, and they
ate the dry hay more readily than the wet grass.
Andrea and
I have been riding Sprout and Spotty Dottie nearly every day and their shoes
were worn out.
Michael put new shoes on
them, and reshod Ed and Breezy before he went back to
North Dakota for another stint driving
trucks.
Last weekend Andrea and I took
Sam and Dani for a ride.
Veggie was
colicky the night before—and we had to give him a shot of Banamine—so Sam rode
Breezy instead of Veggie.
On Sunday
Andrea and I made a ride through the low range, taking Dottie some new places
she’d never been before, and discovered a dead cow belonging to our neighbor
Alfonzo. It looked like she might have
died this past spring, possibly while trying to calve. That afternoon we moved the weaned heifers to
the little field above the house to live with Freddy (the old thin cow that
nearly died a few weeks ago, now regaining weight), and put the 3 bull calves
in my old horse pasture.
Last Monday
Andrea and I made a short, fast ride on Dottie and Sprout.
Carolyn and Heather made a loop through the
low range, too, with Heather on a gaited horse nicknamed Romeo—one she’s
training for some people in
Montana.
Carolyn called Andrea on her cell
phone to mention they were going to move their cows.
We hurried home so I could change horses and
ride Ed to help them gather and move their cows down from the 320-acre mountain
pasture before the weather got bad.
A
snowstorm and cold weather were predicted.
If the north slopes freeze or gets snow-covered, it will be harder (and
more risky) to gather those cattle.
The next
day was cold and stormy but Andrea and I rode Sprout and Dottie down the road a
ways, not wanting to skip Dottie’s training ride.
Both horses were goofy in the wind and
spooked at birds and other “normal” objects.
By afternoon it was raining hard—and snowing in the high country.
We skipped our training rides for the next 2
days during stormy weather.
With the
rain and snow the creek has risen a little, and we had a little more irrigation
water. Lynn is trying to water a couple of our dry
fields before the ground freezes up.
Yesterday it was cold but not raining, so Andrea and I rode Sprout and
Dottie for nearly 4 hours. It was too
muddy to take Dottie out in the hills so we went up the road about 6 miles,
almost to Mulkey Creek, and back again.
Today we rode again, this time with young Heather, riding the horse
she’s training, and rode more than 3 hours—up the right fork of Withington
Creek to the top gate on the jeep road through our high range
OCTOBER 5 – Last Sunday Andrea and Lynn butchered Opie for
Michael and Carolyn. He’s a big yearling
that had a very rough start in life.
Born a twin, his mother abandoned him when she had the second calf, and
he never had a chance to nurse. Carolyn
found him after the calf was at least half a day old. He was chilled and unable to stand up, and magpies
had eaten his umbilical cord and pecked a big hole in his belly. Carolyn brought the calf home on her
4-wheeler and called Michael, who was helping a neighbor. When Michael got home they tubed the calf
with colostrum and tried to clean up the gaping hole and sew his belly back
together. They had to leave a gap for
him to urinate through, since his sheath had been eaten by the magpies.
The stitches didn’t hold very well
and they treated him with antibiotics.
He was soon able to nurse a bottle, but still had an infection in the
umbilical area.
A few weeks later, they
lost a big calf that got knocked into a water trough on its back and
drowned.
They brought that cow home and
grafted the orphan calf onto her.
She
was high strung, however, and kept trying to crash out of the corral.
Even though they still needed to keep
treating the calf with antibiotics, it wasn’t going to work if they had to keep
the pair confined any longer.
So they
gave the calf a final dose of antibiotics and let the pair out in the field
with the other cows, and Michael said, “Hope he lives.”
The person he was talking to didn’t hear
quite what he said, and thought “hope he” was “Opie” so that became the name of
the calf.
Opie survived and grew big, in
spite of the hole in his belly.
He
couldn’t be sold with the rest of the calves last fall, so they planned to
butcher him.
Andrea volunteered to do
that, and cut up the meat for them.
It
was interesting to see how the inner wall of his belly had healed, with a lot
of scar tissue on the outside to protect it.
Opie also had unusually big joints, probably from septicemia (similar to
navel ill or joint ill)—the infection that nearly killed him as a baby.
Otherwise he was a nice big healthy yearling.
On Monday I took off Rubbie’s shoes
and trimmed her feet.
I probably won’t
be riding her any more this year; I only rode her on short rides when Sam rode
Veggie.
The rest of the fall and winter
Sam will probably ride Breezy.
Tuesday Andrea and I rode Sprout
and Dottie up the right fork again, in spite of the cold windy weather.
We picked a sample of the strange new weed
that appeared all over our range this year, since our county extension agent
was unable to tell what it was from the photos we took.
Andrea took it to her, and she was finally
able to identify it as Elk weed or deer ears.
The variety on our range looks like the type that’s called Monument
Plant.
Elk season is open now in our area
and we’ve had a horrendous amount of traffic up and down our road, and
4-wheelers going all over the range.
On
our ride Wednesday we met 5 4-wheelers coming down out of the middle
range.
That afternoon I went to the
eye-doctor because my vision has suddenly become blurred in my right eye.
The doctor says I’m starting to get
cataracts.
Andrea finished cutting up the meat
for Michael and Carolyn, but slipped with the knife while cutting through a leg
joint, and sliced her forearm.
Emily
helped her bandage the spurting wound.
They put butterfly bandages across the cut to hold it together, and it
looks like it will heal ok that way without stitches.
That evening Lynn and I lured the
cows out of the lower back field and brought them up to the little pasture
above the corrals for overnight so we could preg check them the next
morning.
It started raining at midnight
and rained all night.
The next morning
it was snowing when Duwayne Hamilton brought his truck and trailer to load our
big bull to haul him to the sale.
We
decided to sell him because he will be 5 years old next year and is starting to
get too aggressive.
We have some younger
bulls coming on.
The old bull was
belligerent and angry when
Lynn tried to bring
him out of the back corral, and
Lynn
had to grab a pitchfork.
Andrea and I helped
herd him through the main corral to load him, and it was a good thing there
were 3 of us; the bull thought about charging at us, but we had him
outnumbered.
It was a relief to have him
safely in the trailer!
It was still snowing when Lynn and
I brought Freddy and the heifers around from the field above the house, and the
3 little bulls from the horse pasture.
We locked them in side pens.
When
the vet came to preg check, we had all the cows in the holding corral to preg
check and vaccinate, then vaccinated the bull calves and heifers.
Carolyn and Heather came down to help.
Then Andrea went up to their place to help
vaccinate and preg-check their herd.
A
couple of neighbors (the ones Heather has been riding range for all summer)
also came to help.
All of their cows
were pregnant.
Our cows were also
pregnant (except for Freddy, who was sick during the time she should have been
with the bull).
Two of the heifers where
questionable.
They are either open or
just recently bred, so we may check them again later.
It was a wet, miserable day with the wind and
snow, but we’re glad to have the cows worked.
Yesterday was clear, so Andrea and
I rode Dottie and Sprout, in spite of the deep mud.
We made a loop over the low range; a good
experience for Dottie in learning to try to keep her footing and balance on the
slippery hillsides.
She’s come a long
ways in her training in the last 2 months.
Today Andrea finished grinding the
hamburger from Opie.
Lynn and I moved
the cows down to the lower back field, holding back the two questionable
yearling heifers.
We put them above the
house with Freddy and the heifer calves.
We may check them again to see if they are pregnant; we don’t want to
sell them unless they are truly open.
This afternoon Andrea and I made a
short ride on Sprout and Dottie, and I changed Dottie from the broken snaffle
(a training bit) to a Pelham—using the snaffle reins on the Pelham.
Now I can eventually transition her into the
curb.
A Pelham is actually a curb bit
(with shanks) and snaffle rings.
I can
now use 4 reins and gradually get her used to the curb bit and finish her
training.
OCTOBER 14 - Last Sunday afternoon after church Emily rode
with Andrea and me. She rode Sprout and
Andrea rode Breezy.
That evening Andrea took Sam’s turtle out to Mark’s place
(those 3 kids were with their dad that weekend) so Sam could say good-by to the
turtle. Andrea turned it loose by the
ponds where Sam found it this summer, so it could hibernate for winter.
Monday it
was warm, so Andrea and I rode and Sprout for 3 hours—up the ridge to the
320-acre mountain pasture to check the gates and make sure they were still shut
with all the hunter traffic.
It was the
first time I’d ridden Dottie in very much snow.
Both the top and bottom ridge gates were shut and we decided not to ride
down into Baker Creek to check those gates because the snow was very deep on
that timbered slope.
We were
expecting a check in the mail that day from the bull we sold, but all we got
was a note saying the check was being held for lack of proof of ownership!
We were flabbergasted, because the bull had
our brand on him (branded as a calf, since we raised him).
We called our local brand inspector, who
knows our cattle, and he called and talked to the saleyard’s brand inspector
and got it straightened out.
We got our
check a few days later.
When Lynn went to town that
day for mail and groceries he talked with a person who saw 7 wolves a few days
ago--in the field over the hill from us, just through the fence from our low
range. That’s way too close for comfort! I just did an interview with a ranch family a
few miles the other side of town who lost a horse to a pack of wolves earlier
this fall. The horse was in a pasture
with several other horses and a herd of cattle, and the wolves singled out this
horse and killed it.
Michael
drove home from North Dakota;
their job was shut down for a week and he decided to come home and get caught
up on some things rather than stay there in the truck. He got home in the wee hours Tuesday
morning—the morning Andrea and Emily were going to drive to Boise
to catch a plane the next morning to fly to Rhode Island for the World Burn Congress.
We’d
planned to put down the 4 old horses before winter (Chance and Molly—Heather
and Carolyn’s old horses—and Andrea’s Fozzy and Snickers) the next time Michael
was home, so we quickly decided to do it now.
The weather was still decent; a nice time to do it instead of in the
cold and snow. Andrea and Em postponed
their drive to Boise
until afternoon. Early that morning she
came down and we took photos of Fozzy (her crippled 23-year-old gelding) and
Snickers (the 29-year old mare that was Andrea’s best cowhorse in earlier
years).
After she’d
had a chance to say good-by to each of them, Michael came to help. The kindest final gift a person can give a
beloved animal is a merciful release from pain and infirmity. Fozzy had been unsound for several years. More recently he’d developed several
cancerous growths up under his flank and they were getting worse; he was losing
weight and didn’t have any fat under his skin for insulation. He was shivering and miserable during cold
nights. Snickers was becoming unstable
on her feet and her vision was failing.
It was time to let them go.
A well-placed bullet to the brain
is the most instant and merciful death, quicker than the veterinarian’s
sedation and lethal injection. Michael
did this act of mercy for his little sister’s beloved horses, and then used our
backhoe to dig a grave for them beneath some trees along the stackyard across
the creek—a nice final resting place.
Andrea and
Emily drove to Boise
that afternoon, on the first leg of their journey to the World Burn Congress, a
special event that would help Andrea fill the void and ease the pain and grief
of loss. Early the next morning they
flew to Chicago and then on to Providence, Rhode Island.
On that day, Michael performed the
same kindness for Chance and Molly.
Chance was 30 years old and has had bad teeth for several years, unable
to chew hay very well.
He spent a couple
winters here while young Heather was in college, and I fed him grain, alfalfa
pellets and senior horse pellets, and cut fine grass hay into inch lengths with
scissors--a couple buckets per day.
He
did ok on soft green grass during the summer, but needed help with his winter
diet.
This past summer he was losing
weight even on green grass, so Heather fed him a special mush every day—soaking
the pellets so they’d be easier to eat.
He’d become extremely thin by this fall, in spite of the pampering, and
his eyesight was failing.
Molly, 31 years old, was one of
Carolyn’s first horses growing up. After she married Michael her kids both
learned to ride on Molly.
It was hard
for them to say good-by.
Michael dug
their grave below the big fallen tree along the edge of the Wild Meadow on the
upper place, and set a big rock—with the backhoe--to mark the spot.
Later that afternoon Heather rode
down here on the horse she’s training, and I rode Dottie.
We made a loop over the low range.
Riding out there on these young horses was
good emotional therapy after the morning’s sobering finale for the old horses.
When we got home I helped
Lynn make a dividing
fence (using two electric wires) for Rubbie’s pen.
We put Veggie on one side and Rubbie on the
other.
I’ve had Veggie separate from her
all summer in an adjoining area—so they could be next to each other but fed
separately.
For winter we need to be
able to drive through that area to feed cattle, so we just divided their old
pen.
Veggie, who will be 28 years old in
the spring, eats slower than his sister who is a year younger, and we don’t
want him to lose weight during winter.
Last winter she got too fat and he became thin, just because he eats
more slowly and she got more than her share.
Andrea’s younger kids are spending
this week with their dad while she and Emily are at the World Burn Congress,
and
Lynn is
feeding the dogs and cats while everyone is gone.
Andrea and Emily arrived at the WBC the first
evening in time to go on the walk of remembrance—a special time of remembering
friends and loved ones lost.
She and Em
walked in remembrance of Jeff Allen (son of Bill and Diz Allen—friends of ours
here in Salmon) who died fighting a forest fire 10 years ago, and Sara who died
after suffering burns over 100% of her body in an accident in Yellowstone Park,
the same summer Andrea was burned.
She
also walked in remembrance of the team of firefighters who died this year in
Arizona—all of whom
Andrea met last year when she was working at the Halstead fire.
Andrea and Em enjoyed reconnecting
with people they met last year, and some that Andrea and I met at the WBC in
2008, including George Pessotti.
Em wants
to help start a support group for children of burned parents.
While Michael was home he borrowed
our flatbed trailer and hauled big round bales (purchased from a neighbor) for
Heather’s horses, and a load of small bales.
While Andrea was gone, Heather rode with me so I could keep training
Dottie.
Our second ride out through the
low range, Dottie got mad and grumpy at having to follow the other horse on the
way home and she bucked up the hill and passed him, and I had to spin her
around to stop her.
That’s the most
she’s ever misbehaved!
She did better
the next few rides.
While the younger kids were staying
with Mark, the deer season opened, and Charlie (age 12) shot his first
deer.
He was very proud of that
accomplishment.
Lynn took down some of the old tangled
electric fence around Snicker’s pen, and put up new ones before we put Dottie
in that pen.
I picked some of the big
rocks and moved them, and dug out some of the noxious weeds that Snickers
didn’t eat—that Dottie started eating.
After we moved Dottie to the bigger pen, we took down the temporary
divider fence in
Willow’s
pen so she could have her whole pen again.
On Saturday Michael drove back to
North Dakota to resume
his truck driving job.
Lynn turned off our irrigation water.
With it freezing hard at night we don’t want ice
flows across the fields.
I helped him
cover our woodpile with tarps, in preparation for winter snow.
Yesterday
morning Andrea and Em flew back to Chicago and
then to Boise,
and drove home late last night. They had
a wonderful time at the WBC and met a lot of new friends. Nearly 1000 people attended, from 7
countries. They hope to keep in touch
with some of the special people they met.
This
morning Andrea and Em were sleeping after their late drive home, so Lynn took the kids to the
school bus. Carolyn and Heather rode
down here late morning and I rode Dottie and went with them for another training
ride. Later after Andrea had a chance to
catch up on some sleep she wanted to ride, so we took Sprout and Ed for a short
loop over the range. I fed everybody
supper this evening.
OCTOBER 23 – After Andrea and Emily got home from Rhode Island we had some
nice weather for awhile. Last Tuesday
Andrea and I rode Sprout and Dottie up the creek to meet Carolyn and Heather,
and we rode with them about 6 miles up the creek. They brought along two of their cowdogs, and
it was the first time Dottie had been around dogs. It was good for her, to get used to the
dogs. We also met a lot of traffic on
that narrow little jeep road in the canyon, with hunters coming and going.
The next day Andrea and Lynn drove
to
Idaho Falls
for Andrea’s monthly appointment with her pain management doctor, so I rode
with Heather for Dottie’s daily ride.
Andrea and Lynn got back in time to get the kids off the bus, and Andrea
took Charlie to town that evening for singing practice.
On Thursday
Andrea and I rode for 3 hours, making a loop through the low range and stopped
to take a picture of a rattlesnake—unusual for them to be out this late!
The next day, with
no school, Sam and Dani rode with us on Breezy and Ed for a short ride over the
low range.
Lynn set tall posts to make a capped gate
into Veggie’s end of the pen he shares with Rubbie. Andrea helped him put a pole across the
top. It’s handy to have a gate there; I
no longer have to climb over the net wire fence to get into that end of the pen
to break ice on their water tubs, and it will be nice to be able to bring
Veggie in and out without having to go through the division fence between him
and Rubbie.
On Sunday
we took Dani and Sam on a much longer ride, into the middle range, with Carolyn
and Heather. We decided it was safer to
ride out there in the mountains than on the creek road, with all the hunting
traffic. We rode past a couple water
troughs and the dogs enjoyed cooling off in the water.
Monday I
had a severe nosebleed after I got up in the morning, and couldn’t get it
stopped for several hours. Lynn helped me do my
morning chores. By afternoon I was doing
better, and managed to make a short ride on Dottie. Our weather has been so nice I hate to skip
any days with her training. I know there will be a lot of days this winter we
won’t be able to ride.
Yesterday
Andrea and I made a much longer ride, through the middle range and into the
high range, to see where the elk might be, since
Lynn drew for an elk tag in the cow hunt next
month.
We checked the gates on our
320-acre pasture on our way home, to make sure hunters haven’t tried to go
through. There’s some snow on the high range and the ground was frozen and
slippery in places; we led the horses down the steep slope off the ridge, down
into Baker Creek, in case they fell down.
Dottie managed fine and led nicely down the steep, slippery
mountain.
I’m glad I led her a lot last
winter during her early training and groundwork.
Coming down Baker Creek through our 320 there
were dozens of big trees blown down and broken off from a recent storm, with
some trees down over the trail.
The
horses had to jump over some and plow through a bunch of downed tree
branches.
Dottie didn’t hesitate to go
over and through the obstacles.
She’s
coming along very well in her training.
Andrea’s
kids are looking forward to Halloween and Sam and Dani gave us a preview,
posing for us in their costumes.
