LATE SUMMER 2103

JULY 22 – Spotty Dottie is coming along nicely in training. Last Sunday we started getting her used to going with another horse; I saddled Ed and rode with young Heather and Dottie in the little pasture above the corral. Then we started riding both horses daily out on the low range, and also led Dottie from Ed a few times.

 



I’ve also been getting her used to having her feet handled for shoeing, smoothing them with the rasp, placing a shoe on her foot and tapping on it with a hammer.

Andrea turned hay Sunday afternoon, and then she and her friend Mike took 4-wheelers up through the 320-acre mountain pasture and sawed up the huge tree that blew down over the main trail in the timber on the high range just above our place. Lynn got the turned hay baled and hauled.

On Monday Dani rode with Andrea and me (Dani on Ed, Andrea on Sprout and me on Breezy) for 4 hours to check troughs on the middle range—the longest ride this year for 8-year-old Dani. We worked on a couple springs that were no longer running into the troughs.



That evening when Andrea drove past our cows in the swamp pasture on her way to Em’s graduation from drivers’ education class, she noticed Freddy lying by herself, not looking very well. She’d lost a lot of weight—apparently relapsed from whatever was wrong with her earlier. Lynn and I brought the cow and her calf down to the corral and took her temperature. It was 105 degrees F. We gave her LA-200 and an injection of Banamine to help reduce the fever and make her feel better. She’s not eating very much, and not chewing her cud. The next day her temperature was still high (104 degrees) so we gave her more Banamine. By the third day her temp was 102.4—nearly down to normal, but we treated her again. But she still wasn’t eating much, nor chewing her cud.

The next day her temperature was up a little more, so we switched antibiotics, giving her Baytril every day for 4 days. Her temperature is normal now, but she’s not eating at all, and losing more weight. Yesterday we gave her some baking soda and water by stomach tube, in hopes to normalize the pH in her rumen, but she’s still not eating or chewing her cud. She’s very weak and dehydrated. So today I soaked up a couple pounds of alfalfa pellets and beet pulp and we gave her several gallons of water and “mush” this morning by stomach tube, and again just before dark.



Michael drove home from North Dakota last week, to be home for awhile and catch up on things here. On Friday he helped Lynn work on our baler all morning. The frame was cracking so we had Bob Minor come over and weld it. Andrea turned hay in the field below the lane that afternoon and by evening it was dry enough to bale—and the baler worked! Lynn baled till dark and got it finished.

On Saturday Lynn hauled hay; Andrea rolled some of the bales out of the wet areas so he wouldn’t get the stackwagon stuck. Yesterday he cut our last field of hay, the lower field across the creek. Michael is busy re-shoeing all their horses, and shoeing the young horses Heather is training for various people.

Today we moved the cows down into part of the lower field that we didn’t cut for hay. When we brought the cows down through the lane next to the horse pens, Dottie and Willow both ran around bucking, then Willow stomped her water tub and got both front feet in it. I rinsed it out but now she thinks splashing in her tub is a fun game. Lynn and I got out the old tires we used years ago to resolve the same problem for a couple young horses—one tire on top of the other, putting a rubber tub inside the top tire—at a height that makes it much harder for her to get her feet into it.

This afternoon Bob Minor got called out to work on a huge fire that started near Challis (60 miles away), to do the weed washing; all vehicles coming and going from the fire must be power-washed to prevent spread of weed seeds. Andrea went to help him.

AUGUST 2 – Andrea has been at the fire camp in Challis for 11 days now, working long hours (from 6 a.m. until dark—about 10 p.m.) and we’ve been taking care of her younger kids, with Emily’s help.







We continued to keep Freddy alive with feedings by stomach tube (into her nostril and to the back of the throat and down into her stomach), soaking alfalfa pellets into a mush and then running the mush through a blender. Mixed with several gallons of water (and a little molasses for added calories) the mush goes readily down the tube. But with her rumen not working, nothing much was going through. The 3rd day of “instant meals”, we also gave her a gallon of mineral oil and a quart of castor oil, in an attempt to get her gut working again. Within 36 hours her rumen was “empty” and she was passing manure again! She was still terribly weak, but started eating and drinking, and chewing her cud. We tubed her a couple more times with “mush” but after that she was strong enough in her protests that we stopped putting her in the chute for her food. We gave her some good alfalfa hay, and she is eating a little better.

She dried up her milk a couple weeks earlier when she first got sick, but we kept her calf with her—for company. They are both happier being together, and less stressed than if we’d separated them. But as soon as she started eating again, Freddy came back to milk production and her calf started nursing again. She’s so thin that we considered separating them, but decided that the psychological benefits of keeping them together outweigh the physical drain on the cow. On Sunday we moved them to the little pen and lane by the calving barn, where there’s some green grass.





Young Heather and Dottie are making good progress. We’re making longer rides now, with me accompanying them on Ed. We’ve been taking Dottie all over the low range, up and down the hills, and trotting on some of the trails. There’s still a little water in the upper crossings in Baker Creek and Dottie had to learn that she can walk across the mud and water and doesn’t have to try to jump the creek. We made one ride into the middle range and Dottie had her first experience with Heather opening and closing a wire gate. On the steeper hills the saddle kept sliding forward and Heather had to get off a few times to reset the saddle. We’ll need to use a breeching to hold the saddle in place.







Last week Lynn finished baling and hauling, so we are done haying. Emily helped me put tarps on my 2 little stacks of horse hay—the load that fell down and we re-stacked next to the horse pens. Michael and Nick chopped larkspur in Baker Creek in the 320 so it won’t kill any cattle when they put their cows in there. Yesterday they branded their 4 late calves and took their herd up there.

Last Friday Dani rode with me for nearly 2 hours; she rode Ed and I rode Breezy. We discovered one of John Miller’s cows on the wrong side of the fence (she’d crawled into the low range). There were about 30 cows gathered by the gate wanting to come through, but we chased them away from the gate and Dani held them back while I got the wayward cow through the gate. Then we checked the water trough to make sure it was still running enough to water the 50 pairs in that area.

On Saturday Dani and I rode again, for nearly 4 hours, checking more water troughs. The cows have tromped and broken the plastic pipe going into one trough. We tied our horses at the Green Trough and ate our lunch there, watching bluebirds going in and out of a hole in a dead tree, feeding their babies.



A couple days ago Michael reshod Sprout and Ed for me. Then Dani and I made another 4 hour ride, checking the range and working on several water troughs. On the way home she wanted to try to get off to open the little metal gate the bicyclists put on their trail, and was proud of herself to be able to open and close that gate.
 
We don’t have enough hay of our own this year, so we bought 55 tons of hay from a ranch family 100 miles from here. The son and grandson hauled it in two trips with their truck and trailer and a semi. It is nice grass/alfalfa, and a reasonable price ($185 per ton, delivered) considering the high price of hay this year.

Yesterday Dani and Sam both rode with me (Sam on 27-year-old Veggie) to check water troughs in the 320. Today I helped young Heather move her old horses to another area behind our calving barn where they can graze for a few days.





AUGUST 18 – A couple weeks ago Alfonzo and John Miller and family moved their cattle from the middle range to the high range. They apparently put a big group up along our 320 fence on their way; a couple cows got pushed through the fence into our pasture. The grass is really dry this year; usually it’s still green on the high range when the cows go in there, but not this year. Our creek is very low, and we had to shut off our water on the upper place. Michael and Carolyn can’t have water in the ditch that goes through their corral, not even enough for their horses to drink. So they are piping water into a tank for their horses.

There’s only enough water to service the 2 lower places (with earlier water rights). We have enough water to try to grow a little pasture on some of our hayfields on this place, but the big field by Andrea’s house has no water and will remain dry this fall.

Last Monday Michael reshod Breezy for me, and put shoes on Dottie—her first shoeing. She did well, thanks to all the foot-handling and getting her used to hammering on her feet. The next day he headed back to North Dakota to his truck driving job.





That Friday, Nick helped Lynn put a big tarp on our new haystack, then the next day he drove back to college in Iowa—a 22 hour drive. That day Dani rode 4 hours with me. We went up through the 320 and pushed some range cows up Baker Creek a ways; they were hanging down on our fence, very thirsty. Then we came home through the middle range and found 5 pair that John and Alfonzo missed, and took them a mile up the mountain to the high range. Dani is delighted to be able to move cows with grandma! She loves riding and herding cows.





Carolyn and young Heather were gone for a couple days, to attend Carolyn’s brother’s wedding. That Sunday Lynn took the kids to Challis to the fire camp so they could see Andrea briefly.

On Monday Dani made another long ride with me, and helped me move the range cows more than a mile up Baker Creek. They were short of water so we took them clear up to the top trough that John Miller fixed a few days ago. Now his cows know where that trough is, and if they stay in the high country they’ll have plenty of water. Dani helped me again last Wednesday; I worked on the springbox for the top trough in our 320 (the holes were plugged and the trickle of water was missing the box) and then we moved a bunch more range cows clear up to the big trough at the head of Baker Creek.





We were going to move our cows to heifer hill but Lynn discovered that 2 big trees had fallen down over the fence between that pasture and the Gooch place, so he had to saw out the trees and fix the fence. Dani helped me move the cows the next day, after he got it fixed.
 
On Thursday both girls rode with me (Sam’s longest ride this year on old Veggie) and I worked on the lower trough in the 320. We checked the upper one I fixed the day before (still working!) and ate our lunch in the shade with our horses tied to trees.





The fire near Challis is finally under control. The fire camp disbanded yesterday evening, and Andrea was able to come home. The skin on the inside of her knees is rubbed off, however, and very painful. She always wears shorts when working outside in hot weather, because her grafted skin has no sweat glands and she overheats horribly if her legs are covered. She managed fine until a new supervisor at the fire camp insisted that she wear long pants. The combination of heat (97 degrees in the afternoons) and the abrasion of cloth against her delicate skin rubbed the grafted skin off and now she has huge painful raw areas. We hope she doesn’t develop infection.

SUMMER - JULY, 2013

JULY 5, 2013 – We had several days of cool, rainy weather last week after we scattered the cows out on the middle range pasture, and they stayed scattered, doing very well for awhile. Granddaughter Heather rode with Andrea and me one day to check on the cattle and gates.

As we were going up through our 320-acre pasture, we nearly stumbled over a pair of elk calves hidden in the sagebrush. One of them jumped up and took off immediately, but the other one lay low, thinking we couldn’t see him—until Heather’s horse took a step closer. Then he, too, bolted away.

We skipped Dottie’s lessons while it was cold and rainy and her pen was wet and slippery. Andrea caught Willow a few times and brought her out of her pen to let her eat grass and be brushed, and I trimmed her feet. I hadn’t trimmed her feet since winter and they were getting too long.

Andrea and I took time to re-locate some of the salt blocks that our range neighbor Alfonzo put out on the middle pasture. He put them in odd places where the cows might never find them, and on steep hillsides where the cows were rolling them down into the creek bottoms in their attempts to lick salt. We carried those blocks to the traditional salt grounds in areas where the cows need to be—we’ve always used the salt to entice them into areas that need to be grazed. On one long haul Andrea tied her sweatshirt around a block and tied it to her saddle, and I led Sprout while Andrea carried the smaller block by hand. Another day we rode up to the top of Mill Mountain and put the fence back together. Every year we have to fix it; hunters take it apart every fall. We led our horses down the other side, down the elk trails through the rocks and thick mahogany brush.

After the weather cleared up again, our Amish neighbors started haying, using their draft horses to pull their swather, rake and baler. Lynn took photos of them using the horses for haying.

Heather and Nick drove 4-wheelers up into our 320 to haul several bundles of steel posts up to the Baker Creek side. They spent a couple days fixing some of the bad spots in the fence where elk have been going over it. The fence was leaning and about to fall down. We don’t want range cattle getting into that pasture; we need it for Michael and Carolyn’s cows later this summer.

Last Thursday we brought the cows into the corral, sorted off the 4 yearling heifers and put them with the little yearling bull in the orchard and horse pasture, and put the 4-year-old bull out with the cows in the lower swamp pasture. Sam and Dani helped us move the cows, and Sam tripped in the rocks and skinned her knee and elbow. A few of grandma’s Bandaids fixed her up nicely.

We started working with Dottie again, after skipping her lessons for a week. Heather got on her again and I led her around in circles. The second time, Dottie was a little nervous and she jumped around a little, but didn’t buck, and soon settled down and Heather was able to ride her in circles around her pen as I led her. The following days she did very well and soon Heather was riding her solo around the pen without me leading or longeing her. Within a few more days she was able to start doing a little trotting in circles, with me at the center of the circle holding the lead rope. After her first bit of panic, Dottie settled into it and by the next day didn’t need me anymore.

Last week Lynn drove his 4-wheeler up the creek to our high range to check the gates on the road, and discovered about 40 pair of the neighbor’s cows in our high pasture; they’d come down through some open gates. The next day Andrea and I rode up there and moved the cows back out. The cows were easy to herd, but it was hard to get around the fallen trees in several places we needed to go. The old trails up the creek bottom have been obliterated by downed trees. The dead ones, killed by the terrible fire we had 10 years ago, keep blowing down over the trails and fences.

We managed to get the cows out and shut the gates, but the fence is flat in several spots, mashed by fallen trees. We tried to take the cows over into Mulkey Creek where they belong, and had trouble getting them down those trails through the timber—more fallen trees obstructing the trails. We got them part way down that creek, and then climbed out of Mulkey Creek (leading our horses up the steepest part of the mountain) and back onto our own range.

We made a place for Molly and Chance to graze above our stackyard; there was a lot of grass there going to waste. There isn’t a very good access to the creek, so Heather is hauling water for them.

Last Sunday Andrea and I rode to check the range after giving Sam and Dani a short ride on Veggie and Ed. We went up into the high range and discovered that the windstorm and/or lightning strike had felled a huge tree across the trail up through the timber above the 320. We had to make an awkward detour through the trees, to get past it. When we came back through the middle range after driving some high cows back down, we checked the troughs that John and his family recently worked on. Lynn had told him how to get one of those pipelines working again—by digging it down farther to prevent an airlock. It was still working nicely; they got it repaired successfully. We also found the binoculars that John told us his friend left hanging in a tree by the other spring box they’d worked on. Andrea carried them home, and Lynn took them over to John’s place that evening.

Andrea and her friend Mike took his 4-wheeler up on the range that same evening and sawed out several trees that have fallen over the main trails through the timber in the middle range.

Our weather turned very hot and dry—up into the 90’s—which is quite hot for our part of the country. On Monday Andrea and I rode to the upper place to meet Carolyn, Heather and Nick and help them bring their cows down from the south half of the 320 pasture. One of their last 2 pregnant cows had just calved the day before, and we had to find that new baby before we brought the herd. He was barely able to travel that far and was hot and tired when we got them down to the upper corral. We let them rest while Carolyn, Nick and Lynn took their stock trailer down to our place and loaded up our 2 young bulls (2-year-olds) and hauled them up to the corral. Dani came up to the corral with Lynn and Mike on the 4-wheelers, and she waited with us, sitting on Sprout, while Andrea helped Heather sort out 3 yearlings to leave in the corral.

When we unloaded the bulls we put them with the cows and took the herd across the fields and over the hill to the Cheney Creek pasture. The new baby got tired on the way, so we left him and his mama in Gopher meadow. On our way home I let Dani ride Ed and I rode with Lynn on his 4-wheeler.

On our various rides recently, we saw the cow elk a couple time, with the twin calves, in Baker Creek in our 320. The twins are really growing and have now lost their spots.

Yesterday, Lynn and I helped Carolyn, Heather and Nick dehorn, band and brand one of their little yearlings, and deloused both of them.

They didn’t brand or castrate Opie. He is the twin that almost died last year when his mother abandoned him and the magpies ate his umbilical cord and pecked his belly open. He was nearly dead when Carolyn found him, and she and Michael stitched him up. Part of his sheath was completely gone, however and they had to leave an opening for him to urinate. He still just dribbles urine, but has managed to survive and grow and stay healthy. They will eventually have to butcher him, but in the meantime he’s having a good life and growing bigger. Carolyn and kids hauled the two yearlings up to the wild meadow in their stock trailer and turned them out with the other yearlings.

Today is the anniversary of Andrea’s burn accident 13 years ago. Last year we celebrated this day with a picnic ride with her kids. This year the 3 youngest kids are with their dad this week, so we will have a celebration later, when they come home.

JULY 13 – Heather is making nice progress with Dottie. Last week we started taking her around to the new corral Michael built for us when he tore down the falling-down round corral that was built more than 100 years ago. The new corral isn’t round, but it’s bigger than Dottie’s pen and has better footing for training horses. Heather has been riding her there, working on walking, trotting, turning, stopping, and general flexibility. She’d been using just a halter with reins and then started using a bridle a couple days ago, giving cues with both the halter and snaffle reins to start making the transition. Now she is riding her to and from the corral, always doing something more and different each day.

Last Saturday Andrea and I rode 4 hours to check the range troughs; some of the springs are running less water in this hot weather, and lower Baker Creek is drying up. There were 40 cows trying to drink at Withington trough (which only runs a trickle and can only water about a dozen cow per day at most), so we moved that group of cows over the hill and down to some other areas with more water.

Lynn hooked up the swather to our big John Deere tractor and started cutting hay. He was able to cut heifer hill and the field below it. He turned off the rest of our irrigation water to start drying out the other fields so he can cut them, too. Sunday evening we went up to my brother’s campsite for a picnic supper.

Monday was a full day. Andrea took Emily to town for her driver’s education class, went to the dentist for a temporary covering over a broken tooth and scheduled an appointment for a root canal and crown. She got home about noon and we rode Sprout and Ed for our usual cow-checking. Lynn started cutting the big field of hay above the corrals and discovered a hydraulic line was leaking, and had to fix it.

There were too many cows at Withington trough again, with no water, so we herded them over the mountain and down to the Bear trough area. Some of them didn’t want to go the right direction. When we got down toward the brush above that trough a bunch of them ran into the brush to go the wrong way. Andrea galloped Sprout to head them off and chase them out of the brush while I was chasing the wayward cows on the other side of the herd.

I heard her holler from the brush, saying she was in trouble, so I galloped around the hill to come see what was wrong. She’d run into a sharp tree branch that had stabbed a couple inches into her thigh, clear to the bone, and broken off. It was spurting blood and she had her hand pressed over the gash to slow the bleeding.

While she held pressure on it, we dug out the bandages in her saddle bag and I got 3 dishtowels (that I use for scarves in cold, wet weather) from my saddle bag. I got a big square bandage ready to slap onto the wound the instant she removed her hand, and we wrapped and tied the scarves around her leg to hold the bandage in place and put pressure on the area to help stop the bleeding. Then we rode home, cleaned it up a little, and she went to town to the ER at the hospital—where she had to wait several hours. The ER doctor flushed and suctioned out a lot of wood fragments and tree bark, and put some internal dissolvable stitches into the flesh (since her graft skin is fragile and wouldn’t hold stitches very well).

She asked about antibiotics but the ER doctor thought it wouldn’t be necessary, and by Tuesday night the leg was hot and red and she had a fever. So Wednesday she went to the clinic and the doctor there didn’t like the looks of it and immediately put her on an antibiotic—and checked her again yesterday to flush it out some more.
They also took an x-ray to see if there were any fragments left in the wound, and to see if the puncture damaged the bone (which was the only thing that stopped the branch from going clear through her leg). The x-rays were encouraging; the bone seems ok and there were no obvious foreign bodies.

The only things that showed up were a fairly large number of staples that are still in her flesh from the graft surgeries 13 years ago. After the grafted skin “takes”, the staples holding it in place are removed, but there are always some that end up under the skin and get missed—and over time they tend to migrate around through the tissues. Over the years Andrea has had numerous staples removed when they showed up in bad places, like under a tendon or pressing into a blood vessel.

Tuesday evening Lynn finished cutting hay above the corrals and started baling the hay on heifer hill and the field below it—until he had a flat tire on the tractor. We moved the last few bales out of my hay shed, to make room for new hay. When Andrea went to the doctor on Wednesday she picked up several more boxes of baling twine.

Grandson Nick came down that morning and helped Lynn change the tire on the tractor; fortunately we had a spare, because the old tire was ruined and we had to order a new one. Nick ate lunch with us. When Lynn went out after lunch to bale hay again, the tractor wouldn’t start. It’s had some problems before, but not this serious. We had to call Jake, the tractor repair person who fixed that same tractor after it was badly damaged in the trailer tip-over wreck.

While we waited for him to come out to fix it, we moved our herd of cows from the little pasture above the house—since we’ll need to drive through there with the loads of hay from the fields above it. As the cows were coming down through the gate (coming eagerly because they knew they were going to a new pasture), Freddy was still up in the pasture. She’s usually front and center when we move the herd, so this was unusual. I walked up there to bring her to the gate, and she seemed a bit dull. I had to make her hurry to catch up with the herd that had already left the field. When she trotted she made a grunting noise. Her udder was empty; she’d gone dry.
So when we moved the herd through the barnyard and corrals to take them to a different pasture across the creek, we held Freddy and her calf back, and kept them in the corral for observation. Her calf was bawling and hungry. Freddy was not interested in food, just picking at the hay we gave her. For a cow that isn’t eating, she was very full.

She was worse the next morning—dull and lethargic—and still very full. She made soft grunting/burping noises when I made her walk to the chute so we could take her temperature. It was 102.8 which isn’t a high fever, but more than a degree above normal. So we treated her with LA-200 (long-acting oxytetracycline) and also gave her Banamine (an anti-inflammatory drug that reduces fever) in hopes it might help her feel better and start eating again. Our vet was unable to come look at her until late that afternoon, and by that time she was feeling much better (thanks to the Banamine), acting like her normal self, chewing her cud. He checked her for mastitis and hardware disease, but she seemed fine. His guess was that she had temporary indigestion from something she ate. That would explain why she wasn’t chewing her cud and was full of gas.

We kept her in the corral overnight for observation, but she was eating a little better again and seemed normal, and had some milk again for her calf, so we turned them back out in the field again the next morning.

Meanwhile we were still having haying challenges. Jake got the tractor problem figured out and it started again. Lynn was able to finish baling the field below heifer hill—almost. The baler quit working just before he got done. He couldn’t get it figured out, so he hauled a load of hay on the stackwagon. They didn’t load very well, being a little smaller and lighter than normal, and trying to load them on a hillside. By the time he got the stacker loaded, it was late evening, so he didn’t unload it in my hay shed, but waited until morning when he wasn’t so tired. When he tried to back it into the shed the next day to unload, the bales started falling off it. When he pulled forward, more fell off, and he finally just had to dump the rest in a pile.

Nick came down to help him try to fix the baler. But it only worked a short while and quit making bales again. Andrea and her friend Mike helped me load the dumped bales in the jeep and take them around to stack by my horse pens—to get them out of the way--and Nick helped us finish loading, hauling and stacking them. Since we had to wait for Jake to come again and look at the baler (and Jake didn’t make it out here that day), Lynn got another load of hay and was able to get it safely unloaded in my hay shed without mishap.

Yesterday he hauled more hay while he was waiting for Jake, and got all the hay off those 2 fields except for the last windrow that isn’t baled yet. Andrea rowed the bales to make it easier. Jake finally came late afternoon, worked on the baler a couple hours, and got it working again. So Lynn baled hay until dark, to finish the field across the creek. He also baled the little bit of hay left on this side, and picked those bales up in the jeep in the dark—using a flashlight—so he could turn the irrigation water back onto that field before the creek drops any more. Our creek is really low and we need to get some the fields watered again (after haying) to grow fall pasture for the cows. He finally got done last night at 11 p.m.

Today young Heather had a good session with Dottie, riding her around the barnyard, corrals, and up into the little pasture above the corrals.

Then Andrea and I rode with John Miller for 6 ½ hours to show him the high range—the larkspur that needs to be chopped before the cows go to that pasture, and all the water troughs, fences and gates. There are several troughs and fences that need fixed. Some of the troughs are rusting out and need to be replaced, and more trees have fallen down over the fences in the old burned area. It will be a major project to fix the fences.

Lynn tried to haul more hay, and had another problem with the stackwagon, dumping part of the hay. He laboriously restacked those bales onto the wagon and got it unloaded. That wore him out so he didn’t try to haul any more hay. It was another “bad hay” day. The next load tried to tip sideways but we were able to prop it and then push the top tiers back into place with the 4-wheeler and a long pole.

We finally got all the hay off that field, and hope to cut the two lower fields tomorrow.

EARLY SUMMER (MAY - JUNE) 2013

MAY 22 - On Saturday Lynn helped our new neighbor, John Miller, work on water troughs on the low range pasture, cleaning out the spring boxes so there would be more flow into the troughs.

Lynn and I put up an electric wire along both sides of the fence between Dottie and Sprout. Even though the fence between them is 6 feet tall, they try to fight each other, rearing up and trying to strike and bite over the fence. The hot wire will keep them more civilized!

Emily helped me clean house and Sunday evening we had our family all together for dinner—Michael and Carolyn and kids, and Andrea and kids. This was a group birthday celebration for all of Michael’s family (birthdays in April) and for Lynn and Andrea (birthdays May 17 and 21).

Today Andrea and I rode for nearly 5 hours on Sprout and Ed, checking the fence around the middle range pasture, fixing some broken wires where the elk went through, and shutting gates. There were a few places where new posts are needed, and those will have to wait until we have more help.

MAY 28 – On Thursday we had a little rain, and new snow on the mountains. I put new front shoes on Ed; her feet are getting long (stumbling) and the shoes are worn out. Then Andrea and I rode to check more fences and fix a range gate, and went through the road pasture on the upper place where Michael and Carolyn’s cattle are grazing. One of their calves (Popsicle—the one that Carolyn and Andrea rescued in January when it was stuck on it’s back and freezing to death) was lame with a swollen front leg. It looked like a rattlesnake bite. We’ve seen a lot of snakes already this spring. After we fixed the gate and checked several water troughs we hurried home so Andrea could go to town and pick up the kids; it was their last day of school and they got out early.

Our new neighbor, John Miller, put his cows out on the low range pasture that afternoon and took them to Baker Creek. They are pasture cattle and have never been on the range before, so they tried to go back home. They were all ganged up along the fence the next morning—hungry and thirsty. Andrea and I rode Sprout and Ed and moved them back to Baker Creek, where they all drank and then went to grazing. We left them spread out over that area and continued our ride up into the middle range to check a few more water troughs to see which ones need worked on.

Saturday we rode with John to show him the middle range and where all the troughs are located. He was delayed awhile because one of his neighbor’s cows had come into his place that morning and had a broken leg—and the neighbor asked him to butcher the cow and hang it in a friend’s cooler. While we waited for John to ride over here, we got our horses ready and picked more than 100 ticks off the two of them. Riding through the sagebrush this spring we’ve gotten a lot of ticks, on ourselves and our horses. We keep picking them off the horses every time we ride.

We showed John the middle range and troughs that need fixed, closed another gate that had been left open all winter, and showed him the collapsed braces where we need to build a new gate between the high range and middle range. He was hoping he could remember the names and locations of all the troughs, so I told him I would make him a map of all the range pastures.

Sunday afternoon we took Sam and Dani for their first ride this summer on 27-year-old Veggie and Ed.

Andrea rode Breezy and I rode 26-year-old Rubbie. I trimmed Veggie’s and Rubbie’s feet just before we rode. Then we made a short ride over the low range and got back just ahead of a thunderstorm. We got the horses put away before it started raining hard.

Today I made enlarged copies of an old topography map of our area, so I can make the range map for John, drawing in the fences, gates, troughs and other important landmarks. This afternoon we vaccinated some of the horses with their annual boosters for West Nile Virus, encephalomyelitis, tetanus, influenza and rhinopneumonitis.

JUNE 4 – Wednesday Lynn, Andrea and one of Emily’s friends made a new gate in the middle range/low range fence. The old gate in the corner of the low range pasture was eliminated when the neighboring rancher put his property fence on line, moving it up the slope several hundred feet. This created a major obstacle for moving range cattle from pasture to pasture, so we built a new gate farther back along the range fence, on grade with the new fence corner, so the cattle can travel around that corner without having to climb straight up the steep mountainside.

Sprout was dull and lethargic for a few days after her vaccination, probably running a low-grade fever. Ed showed no ill effects from her shots, possibly because I’ve been giving her a small dose of “bute” every day to alleviate lameness from her old hock injury and her front foot soreness that has been getting worse the last couple of years. The “bute” is a good anti-inflammatory, similar to aspirin or ibuprofen and it probably minimized any fever or discomfort she might have had from vaccination.

Michael worked for a couple days hauling more dirt away from the back side of Andrea’s house, making more room for vehicles, and backsloping the hill so it won’t topple down or be dangerous for the children to fall down it. He hauled the dirt to our barnyard to cover the big rocks he put as a base in the lane to prevent trucks and tractors getting stuck during wet weather. Now there’s a good rock base but a smooth surface so we don’t keep stumbling over the big rocks!

On Friday we took Sam and Dani for another short ride on Veggie and Ed, and I put front shoes on Rubbie when we got home. That night it got cold again, down to 30 degrees, and froze our tomato plants in the back of the jeep. We’ll have to get some more from our neighbor’s greenhouse!

Saturday Andrea and I rode to check more of the range and then gave Sam and Dani a ride on Veg and Ed when we got home, and Emily rode Sprout—now that Sprout has settled down and become more dependable again. She no longer tries to buck.

Yesterday Andrea, Carolyn, young Heather and I helped John Miller and his family, and our other neighbor Alfonzo gather the cows off the low range and move them to the middle pasture.

Today Carolyn and Heather brought their two old horses, Molly (age 30) and Chance (in his late 20’s) down to Andrea’s house to let them graze around her place to eat down the grass and weeds. They’ve run out of pasture around their barnyard, and those old horses do better eating grass with their bad teeth than eating hay. Young Heather will be coming down each morning to feed them their “mash” of moistened pellets (easy to chew) and change the fly mask on Chance. The face flies bother him a lot, so the fly mask keeps them away from his eyes and he’s a lot more comfortable.

Lynn and I used a step-ladder in Dottie’s pen to trim the elm tree branches while I had her tied in the calving pen for a tying lesson. The branches have grown a lot this summer and are hanging down to where she can reach them. She’s been eating the leaves and branches and they’re not very good for her.

This afternoon we vaccinated Dottie and Willow. This evening just before we went to bed I looked out the window and noticed that Dottie was uncomfortable, alternately picking up all four feet, treading in place. I went out there, brought her out of her pen so she could eat a little grass (to distract her during her first experience with a rectal thermometer) and took her temperature. She was uncomfortable and trembling in pain, and kept her tail clamped down, but I kept rubbing alongside it—a place horse’s like to be rubbed because that’s hard place to reach for itching. Eventually she relaxed and lifted her tail so I could slip the thermometer into her rectum.

Her temperature was 102.4 degrees, which was definitely above normal (a horse’s normal temperature ranges from 99 to 100.5 degrees). She was probably having a reaction to the vaccination. I gave her an injection of Banamine to ease the fever and discomfort. When I put her back in her pen I turned on the yard light that illuminates that pen and the calving pen, so I could watch her during the night, checking on her periodically from the house windows.

JUNE 10 – The day after we vaccinated the fillies Dottie seemed ok (after the Banamine that night) and her temperature was normal. Nick and young Heather came down to our place early that morning and helped us get our cows and calves in from the field and sort off the calves. We vaccinated the cows, vaccinated and tagged the yearling heifers, then branded and vaccinated the calves. It was nice having the grandkids helping; they are a lot stronger than we are! We also vaccinated the three yearling bulls we’ve been feeding for Michael here in our corral.

Dani and Charlie came down to watch the branding. Afterward, they all had lunch at our house. Then the little kids went back to Andrea’s house to help Heather feed the old horses, and Dani went with Heather for the rest of the afternoon—to watch her working with some of the young horses she’s training. This summer she is training several horses again for various people.

Dottie seemed a little dull again by afternoon so I took her temperature and it was very high—105.5 degrees. So I gave her another injection of Banamine. Then Andrea and I rode Ed and Sprout for several hours to check the cows on the middle range. I gave Dottie a partial dose of Banamine just before we went to bed that night (even though her temp had come back down to normal) so I wouldn’t have to get up in the middle of the night to give her another dose. The next day she seemed ok and her temperature stayed normal.

On Thursday the little kids had another riding lesson with their big cousin. Emily and a friend put up a fake electric fence (baling twine) along Andrea’s driveway, so the 2 old horses could graze it and mow down the grass on the edge that we can’t cut for hay. Andrea and I rode and checked the range cows; some are too high (eating the short grass at the higher elevation before it has a chance to grow) and some of John’s cows are grouped too much in a canyon in the lower part where there isn’t enough water for that many cows. So on Friday we moved those cows to better grass and spread them out in a couple of draws where there is plenty of water. It will take them awhile to learn how to use the range.

I’ve been giving Dottie tying lessons the last several mornings and she’s learning to be more patient instead of pawing at the fence, and yesterday I trimmed her feet.
Michael and Carolyn branded and vaccinated their calves yesterday and took their herd up to the 320 acre mountain pasture. Four of their cows haven’t calved yet, so they will brand and vaccinate those calves later this summer.

Lynn made a new pipe to go through the culvert under the road (our old one disappeared) so we can pump water for the cows on the hill pasture. Emily and her friend Noah helped Lynn take water troughs and the pump and hoses up to the culvert under the road by heifer hill, and helped him pump. Today we moved our cows from the field below the lane and took them to the hill pasture, then Andrea and I continued riding up to the middle range. We found too many cows in the first canyon, without water. So we gathered them out of the brush and moved them to the 2nd and 3rd draws. It was stormy that evening, but Michael came down and put new shoes on Sprout. He was just finishing when Carolyn came down on her 4-wheeler to tell him that Heather had discovered a young calf hiding in the sagebrush by their upper corral. He was bawling and very hungry. Heather grabbed him and got him into the corral.

Apparently one of the pregnant cows calved a few days before the branding, and didn’t have her calf with her when they gathered the group to take to the corral. Like a deer, cows hide their babies (to be safe from predators while mama goes to graze) and come back to the hiding place to nurse the baby, until he’s several days old and more mobile. This young calf had been without his mama for 36 hours; she’d been taken with the herd up to the 320-acre mountain pasture.

So Michael quickly finished shoeing Sprout and went to help Carolyn and Heather take the calf back to its mama before dark. He drove their little truck up the mountain, with Carolyn and Heather holding onto the calf in the back of the truck. The cow was bawling at the gate, and baby answered her. When they let him out of the truck he ran to her and started nursing, just as a hailstorm hit. It was a downpour, and made the jeep track so slippery that Michael was barely able to drive back along the jeep track without getting stuck or sliding off the mountain.

JUNE 20 – Michael got all of Heather’s trainees shod, reshod Breezy for me and put new shoes on Ed’s hind feet before he went back to North Dakota to his truck-driving job. Heather started working with Dottie every day when she comes down to feed the old horses their pellet “mush” and change Chance’s fly mask. It took a couple days of persistent work to get Dottie over her saddle phobia. When we bought Dottie last fall she’d been halter trained (to lead and tie) and her former owner said that she’d been saddled (but not ridden yet). Something must have happened that scared her during saddling, because she was very skittish about having the saddle put on her from the left (traditional) side, but had no fear of it being put on from the other side.

She kept jumping and spinning away from the lightweight training saddle as Heather tried to desensitize her with it (and nearly work out Heather’s arm with all the repetition, trying to show her it wasn’t going to hurt her). Heather finally put her in a corner where she couldn’t move away from it, and Dottie eventually resigned herself to having it swung up onto her back.

Heather works with Dottie in the mornings while she’s here taking care of Molly and Chance, then spends the rest of the day working with the other horses she’s training. She works them in her round corral, and in the new arena (not fenced yet, but created with dirt that Michael hauled in and smoothed/leveled). As they progress she takes them out on the range, leading them from another horse, or riding one and leading another, then switches and rides the other one on the way home.

A week ago Andrea and I made a long ride in the rain to check cows, fences and fix another gate. The cows were spread out better in the cool weather and we didn’t have to move any that day. We spent more time checking fences and gates.

But when we got to the 3rd canyon our horses started snorting and didn’t want to cross the little creek. I made it across with Ed, and Andrea was just starting to take Sprout along the sidehill to the upper crossing when Sprout spooked at something and whirled around and tried to bolt out of there. It’s a good thing she’s very strong and agile and had brand-new shoes on, with good traction (toe and heel calks) or she would have fallen down on that steep, slippery hill and rolled to the bottom.
Andrea got her stopped and finally got her across on the lower crossing where it wasn’t so steep. We saw a lone black critter lying in the sagebrush along the trail ahead of us, and it looked dead. As we got closer we saw that it was indeed dead—one of John’s bulls. We found out later that the bull died in the creek the day before. John and his boys brought their team of draft horses out there to pull the body up the bank and out of the creek area. Our horses were spooking when they smelled the trail left from dragging the dead bull.

On Friday Andrea made a fast ride on Breezy to check the cows. Heather started longeing Dottie with the saddle on, getting her used to its feel and sound, and flopping stirrups.

Then she spent a couple days playing with a tarp, letting Dottie walk on it, paw it, and get used to it being put over her back, over her head, etc. She’s not a bit afraid of new things, so we realize that her saddle phobia must have been caused by something that really scared her when she was being saddled. Sammy and Dani “helped” her work with Dottie a couple days, playing with the tarp and longeing Dottie with it draped over her.

Then Heather got on Dottie for the first time and I led her around the pen, to get her used to the feeling of someone on her back. She’s coming along nicely in her training.

The little kids are also enjoying their occasional lessons up at Heather’s arena, riding Gus, Captain and some of the other horses. Heather enjoys teaching young kids and young horses.

On Sunday afternoon Andrea and I rode through the highest part of the middle range and found that lots of cows already using that area, eating the short grass (hardly any grass left up there). We spent an hour patching a big hole in the fence where a huge fir tree blew down over it, wiping out several posts. We used a lot of baling twine (which I always carry in pommel bags on my saddle) and tied a bunch of big branches together to make a barrier that the cows can’t go through—to keep them from going into the high range pasture too soon.

On Tuesday Andrea rode Sprout out on the range to check cows by herself, and ended up chasing a huge mob of cows down out of the high country. They are out of feed up there and wanting to go into the high pasture.

Yesterday was windy and stormy so we skipped Dottie’s lesson. Heather (riding a young mare she trained, named Lacey) rode with Andrea and me to chase more of the high cows down to better grass.

We rode up into the 320 pasture on our way, and a thunderstorm hit—so we waited it out for nearly an hour in the canyon as the lightning cracked all around us. Heather’s dogs were trying to hide under the horses. Lacey and Ed didn’t mind the dogs but Sprout didn’t like them and acted like she would kick them, so we made sure the dogs stayed away from her.

The pelting rain turned to hail and we would have been thoroughly soaked if we hadn’t been wearing chinks (to protect our legs) and good coats. When the worst of the lightning had passed, we continued on, and gathered a bunch of cows out of the high country and took them down to better grass. It was a bit challenging on the slippery wet hillsides, but it didn’t start raining again until we were done chasing the cows and started home again. Lynn had started a fire in our wood stove and it felt really good to come into a warm house and hang our wet coats by the stove to dry.

Today Andrea and I rode Sprout and Ed again and moved some of John’s cows that were grouped in the lower end of Baker Creek with too many for the water supply, and spread them out over the middle area of that range, where there’s a lot more grass--and access to several water troughs.