Castration Blues

Silver has definitely reached the terrible twos.  Since kicking me, I hadn’t worked with him much until the evening of the 21^st.  I longed him around for a while, reminding him of what he had learned before.  He was definitely rusty and tried to see what he could get away with.  However, overall he did pretty well.  The next morning, I tried to work with him again and noticed that he had a piece of skin laid over on his chin and another big hunk laid open on his lower neck, in front.  I got some wound spray and tried to spray it on as best I could, but he was a little jumpy, especially around his face.  The last few days he had been running around with Rebel a lot and they had been “playing” some.  I guess some of the playing had gotten a little rough.  I expect that he is trying to make a move for the top horse position since he is a stallion and Rebel won’t have it.

I decided to leave him be.  Dad was coming the next day so he got some penicillin.  We took him behind the barn and I held his rope and Dad poked him with the needle.  I’ve seen horses that don’t like a shot, but Silver hit the wall.  He bucked and reared, took a look at Dad, turned his back and kicked him in the hip.  Dad went over and I dropped the line.  Dad was fine, as it was a glancing blow, but he jammed his thumb when he hit the ground.  That’s two times where Silver has kicked and gotten away with it; once because he lamed me and the other because he knocked down my Dad.  It is no doubt time for his little procedure.

Thursday morning, the vet came out.  He’s a new guy, an Aggie (Whoop!).  Silver didn’t care where he graduated from, he would not cooperate.  The vet stuck him once, and Silver got away fast and out from under the needle.  After that, we could barely get near him.  I managed to get a few cc’s in his neck. It was a pretty strong sedative, but he just blew right through it he was so jazzed on adrenaline.  We tried twitching him, but couldn’t get the chain on his nose.  We also gave him a tube of oral sedative.  That didn’t make a difference either.  Then we tried tying him to his old snubbing post.  I’ve been wondering how to pull this post out of the ground and he did solve that problem for me.  I waved the vet off before he pulled it all the way out, but he sure loosened it for me.

We thank God for His continued protection.  No one was hurt on Thursday including Silver.  That’s a victory of sorts.

The doc explained that a sedative should calm him. These can be done intramuscularly, which is the easiest to administer.  You just poke it in and press the plunger.  The tranquilizer won’t knock him out, but he is pretty unaware of his surroundings and the pain won’t really register.  That can also be given IM, but it takes more medicine, so you can’t give it while he’s pulling away.  Finally, the anesthesia can only be given intravenously, which means you have to get the needle in the right place and be able to take your time pushing the plunger.  Obviously, this is a real problem if the horse won’t stand still for the simple IM sedative.

There are a couple of ways around this.  We could give an oral sedative, but I don’t think that will do it.  The other way is to restrain him in a way that won’t hurt him or us.  This would involve some heavy panels and two posts on either side of his head that we can run a chain from one post to the other and through his halter and over his nose.  This might do it.

Either way, we judged that his wounds are healing nicely without much help.  We are going to let him heal and build back the trust.  A friend of mine and I were watching him eat on Saturday and he was still pretty jumpy.  I will just stand there while he eats for several days.  He and Rebel are still chasing each other around, stopping periodically and nipping at each other.  Scout just watches them curiously.  Hopefully, Rebel won’t kill him before we can get the vet out and try again

The Story of a Young Horse

The day before July 4^th last year, we were out looking around and discovered that Ol’ Mama Horse had had another gray foal.  Now, what to call him?  We obviously can’t have another Silver.  Traveler is too revered and Shadowfax is too fancy.  So, since he was born close to Independence Day we are calling him Patriot.  Because he was of Mama Horse’s brood, he has a tendency to be gentle, but he was still shy enough to where we couldn’t get our hands on him when we were feeding Mama.  After we pulled Silver off to start working with, another fledgling stud that we call Amigo came up and he and Mama Horse and Silver made a kind of family.  Around October, Dad and I were coming back from the hay field and we noticed that Patriot was all by himself in the Tallow Flat.  The next night we went to check again and he was almost in the exact same spot.  No Amigo, no Mama Horse.  I started looking around and then I caught a whiff of death nearby.  Mama Horse had gone on.  We were not too surprised.  She had never looked good and had of late been possessed of a skin ailment.  So, her loss was felt, but not too keenly.  We had talked of bringing Patriot up, but shortly afterwards he began to hang with Amigo.  We kind of quit worrying about him.

A couple of months went by and Amigo started wandering off and we would find Patriot by himself, often in the Old Field.  The weather started to turn colder and we kept talking about getting him up, but we never could make it happen.  One day, it had been a while since we had seen him and Anna and I came across the bones of a smallish horse in the Old Field.  I feared the worst.  Then I found a telltale patch of white hair.  I have to confess that I did not handle it well.  I was furious at God for allowing this to happen.  I was furious for letting Him grieve my wife so.  I did not handle it well and had to ask forgiveness on my knees later.  I am still ashamed.

Life goes on.  We adjusted.  We knew we didn’t have to worry about Patriot anymore.  I regularly asked God for forgiveness for not trusting Him.  I dealt with my feeling of rejection.  We moved on.  The rains eased up and the roads began to dry so we could start checking out the pasture again.  About ten days or so after we discovered the bones and the white patch of hair we drove the Gator out to the Mineral Box Field.  We could not believe our eyes, but there he was!  Anna was uncontrollably emotional.  It takes a bit of control to keep myself from being moved now, but I must since I am at work.  At the time, I was just stunned.  What we had seen was Mama Horse.  Even after months of being dead, the coyotes finally discovered her tiny carcass and drug her out into the Old Field.  It was her bones and hair that we had found.  I felt even more foolish for my outburst at God.  After all the hours of watching NCIS, we still failed to properly deduce what happened at the crime scene.  I Gibb-smack myself on the back of the head.

It still took a week or so after that, but we regularly went out there and fed him.  Amigo had gone on to bigger and better things, but Patriot was getting more and more accustomed to eating out of a bucket.  He has been trying to move into the bachelor herd.  Sometimes he was around, but most of the time not.  Finally, we found a time when the other horses were not around and we led him all the way from the Mineral Box Field to the Pens.  We started feeding him twice a day and only recently did we go to once a day feedings.

We hated for him to be alone so we decided to move Sarge into the pasture with him.  This was the first use of our new horse pasture.  We finally got to move the saddle horses back up to the front, so we gave Patriot the run of the New Horse Pasture.  We are calling it that because the pasture itself is new, but also because we will use it largely for gentling down new horses.  Of course, we are open to suggestions on the name.

Also, we have decided to turn Sarge out.  The horse is just not getting over his skittishness.  However, one of his good traits is that whenever we had a new horse in with the saddle horses, he was the first to adopt him.  This was true with Leroy (a reenactor’s horse that we kept for awhile) and also with Silver.  The goal would be to split a ration of food between Sarge and Patriot.  This is all Patriot needs and it would wean Sarge off a full ration before turning him out to the main pasture.  Out there, Sarge might be able to train other horses to come to food.

It has been difficult getting Sarge to break away mentally from his old herd in the front.  He has spent lots of time hanging around the new fence, pining away for his old companions.  It has been a little tough to watch, but when I think about the trouble he has caused it makes it a little easier.  Ultimately, he will be happier in the wild.  It is where his nature fits in.  He has begun to adopt Patriot like we hoped.  Now, we drive the Gator over to the pens and the two of them start to wander over together, like a herd.

Patriot is really coming along.  We fed him for several days before even trying to halter him.  Every time we fed, we would rub him down as much as we could.  Eventually, he got more and more used to it.  It got to where we could rub all over his neck and ears whenever he put his head down.  This was the final step.  After hazing around his head while he was eating, putting the halter on was easy.  Now, he didn’t take it quite as well when he hit the end of the lead rope for the first time.  His natural reaction was to continue backing, so I just went with him, keeping the slack out of the rope, but not pulling on it.  He backed up to the gate and had to stop.  I let him catch his breath, then gently took the slack out.  He fought a bit, but we kept at that process a couple of times.  Finally, he took a step toward me, taking the slack out.  This is the key, of course.  The whole idea is to get him to respond to pressure.  By just taking out the slack in the rope instead of actually pulling on it, the horse is instantly rewarded when he takes a step.  The slack automatically comes out.  The lighter the touch, the more responsive to pressure he will be.

Since then, we have haltered him a couple of times and he is a really quick study.  He is leading around pretty good, but still needs to do this a lot so that it is just habit.  I have also gotten Anna and even her sister to do a little of this.  Hopefully, Anna can start working with him without the benefit of my presence.  My goal is to keep him up for another several weeks.  We will go through as much of the training process as possible.  That way, when it is time to ride he will have already had a saddle on, know the bit, and trust people implicitly.

As far as Patriot knows, he was never dead.  The most dramatic thing that has happened to him was his mama dying.  He doesn’t know that we thought him lost.  He doesn’t know that, even though we know better, we feel like he has been resurrected from the dead.  He just continues on in his little horse life.  He eats, he sleeps, he follows the feed bucket, and now, he responds to pressure.

The Final Calf

Well, I think it is about time that we sold the last calf from 2012.  As you know, we have had issues with our ability to actually pen cows.  This is a frustrating experience for me since that is one of the reasons that I wanted to move.  Some of my fondest memories are of getting saddled up, loosing the dogs and going on long cow hunts with my Dad, Grandfather, and sometimes cousins.  Back when I was a boy we had thousands of thicket acres leased.  We’d go pen cows and it could take most of the day.  I started doing this when I was 6.  At times, we would be riding for so long, that I would doze off in the saddle until we heard the telltale baying of the cur dogs, calling us to the cows they had found.  We’d make a run to where they were and try to drive them all back.  As a boy, I rode drag, keeping them bunched up.  As I got older, Dad put me on a flank, where a crazy cow might make a break for the thick woods and I would chase it down, get ahead of it and turn it back to the herd.  This took a good woods horse that would keep your knees clear of trees and, of course you had to be careful not to let a mess of briars drag you off or not to get caught up in some vines.  A good horse could tell whether you were tugging on the reins or if it was random branches and vines.  Punching cows in the thicket, I lost many a hat, got cut many a time, and tore up many a shirt.

I won’t say we got the cows all the time, but it was better than even money that we would.  It’s a type of cowboying that you won’t see in the movies, and frankly, we were pretty good at it.  Flash forward to today.  The cows are close up to the house.  If we drive out into the pasture and shake a feed sack at them they will come a running.  And yet, only about half the time can we pen them, if even that.  With only one good horse and one dog, who despite good instincts doesn’t know what to do, we have to trap them in a small pasture and drive them in like that.  I don’t think life will be like this forever, but the cows have really gotten weird.  They just don’t seem to want to bunch up.  Cows are herd animals and will normally bunch up for protection.  This is why dogs are so important.  They get in, bark around the cows and they automatically get in a herd.  In fact, we used to just sit there and let them bark awhile, letting the glue dry on the herd before starting back to the house.  Poor Dixie doesn’t know all this.  She will bark in the middle of them half the time, scattering them.  Dad or I can get around them easily on horseback, but without that herd consciousness, they just blow on by.

So, until we can get another good horse and one or more well-trained dogs, we are relegated to using the trap.

Heretofore this has involved feeding or watering the cows in the Lane or in the Calf Patch.  There is a gate in the Northeast Corner of the Calf Patch that we could shut and then easily drive the cows into the Pens.  There is an opening in the fence behind Tank 3 (Old Field Tank) that they use to get into the Lane.  The problem recently has been sneaking past them down the Camp Road in order to get behind them.  So, Anna suggested that we cut a gap in the Southwest corner of the Between the Tanks into the Lane and make a path through the old fence line behind Tank 2.  This way, we can leave from the house, go to the West edge of the pasture and move south all the way to the lane.  We have not yet made this path passable by Gator, but I can get through on a horse.  On the 8^th, we executed our plan.  Anna went down the road with a bag of cubes, and led most of the cows into the calf patch.  Ironically, this was the tough part.  It is not easy carrying a 50 pound sack of cubes through a mud hole with hungry cows on your heels.  I, however, got the fun part.  Anna texted me when she was in place, and I did my end run around the northern and western edge of the Horse Pasture, through the Western Gap of the New Fence, behind Tank 2 (Horse Tank), and through our new gap into the Lane.  The cows had no idea that I was there, until some of the spookier ones turned off the cubes that Anna was putting out and came down toward me.

I’m proud to say that the fence that Dad and I put into the Eastern end of the Tank prevented them from crossing Tank 3 into the Old Field.  However, I just couldn’t keep from going past me on the Tank bank.  These tanks were built back in the oil field days and they have about 3-5 foot banks.  These are covered in trees and thicket and you have to have a man up on the bank as well as down on the flat in order to stop the cows.  So, yes, we did get the calf that we wanted, and yes, the fence that Dad and I put into the tank held and turned the cows, but I couldn’t keep those others from passing me without help.

The next day went pretty smoothly.  We separated the calf and his momma quickly and cut her out in the chute.  I am confident that one day we will pen cows like we did in the old days.  I think finishing off our trap so that it will hold cows for several days will be useful.  Then, if they get by me, we can just go around and try again.  We are working on getting another horse up and ready and I need to try Rebel again to see if his back is better.  I would also like to extend our trap to include the Mineral Box Field.  We have a lane there as well that will feed into the Tank Lane and Calf Patch.  Frequent penning will help them drive better and will help Dixie figure out how to be a cow dog.

The underlying lesson in all this has been to commit all of the work of our hands to God.  So many times in recent memory we have tried penning and couldn’t.  We started praying that God’s purposes for the day would stand.  I think this has helped.  Not just with our actual success in the field, but with our attitudes as well.  When we “fail” in our task it is now God’s responsibility and we do not have to take ownership of it.  We still review what we could have done differently, but we just don’t sweat it as much.

Silver's First Ride (Kind Of)

Shortly before the kicking incident I had Silver on the lead rope and introducing him to some friends.  I had not intended to work with him at all, but since I was there and he was hooked up, I started leading him around, reminding him of the basics.  In all the time we had not worked together, he still remembered how to longe, start, stop, back up, etc.  He is still not comfortable when throwing a saddle up on his back but he is getting better.

It was recommended in a horse-breaking book that you work the horse from the fence.  He has to get used to things happening above him and behind his head.  This is one of the main things that a new horse objects to when being ridden for the first time.  The other thing is the weight on his back.  So, in any kind of training, it is best to break all the different elements into the tiniest possible pieces, get him used to it, then reassemble them one by one.  That’s why I think fencework is going to be useful.

With all this in mind, I led him over to the fence and started hazing him from above.  That is the ridiculous looking picture you see here.  Of course, the trick is getting him to stay next to the fence at all.  An option here would be to lead him into the chute and work him there.  However, this could cause a wreck if he does get spooked.  Further experimentation is the key, but having a second man on foot to keep him up close should work the best.

So, without the benefit of someone to pen him in, I could only do so much, but I did lean on him from the fence.  Hanging on to the top rung, I just leaned out with my right hand and put a lot of my weight on him, but was still able to pull myself away if I needed to.

The next step is to get the saddle on him good and tight and let him get used to that or to try to buck it off.  I did not want to do this without some experienced help, so the next time Dad was over, we drug the saddle out.  We got it on him without a whole lot of fuss, but he still is not too keen on this process.  Next was lowering the off side stirrup and the cinch.  It’s really nice having help on this one, because when I just drop it down, Silver spooks and starts to back away, losing the saddle.  This could further spook him, or he could step on it, but if nothing else, he learns that he can get away from it when he wants to.  Because of this, getting the saddle screwed down tight needs to be done as gently and fuss free as possible.  Once it’s on tight, he can buck all he wants.  That would be a good lesson.

Unfortunately, the saddle (especially without the blanket) was too big.  Without adding holes it would just be too loose and that would be certain to cause a real wreck if he bucks and it turns or slides.  Not wanting to just let him go, we eased the saddle off, then led him over to do some fencework.  With Dad kind of holding him there, this was a lot easier, but there were also some other horses over the fence that he was keenly interested in, which kind of distracted him.  I waved my hands.  I leaned on him.  Eventually, I held on to the fence with both hands and feet, then squatted down on his back and basically sat on him like he was a chair.  I know it’s not spectacular, but this was his first ride.  It addressed the two main points about riding, being the height and the weight.  Then, without putting nearly as much weight, I hooked my leg over his back.  He never fretted a bit.

So, Silver’s first ride was really not much of a ride, but hopefully, by the time I actually do get on for the first time, it will be just as uneventful.  I really intend to find the best way to break a wild horse without getting broken myself.  I’ll keep y’all posted!

Never Been Kicked (Until Now)

I would like to begin with profuse apologies for not posting a blog in months.  In my defense, I have been working on a book during my writing time, but I should not neglect the blog and my readers (or reader if the case may be).  That being said, the reason I am posting again is because a friend of mine has recommended the blog to a horse-loving friend of hers.  Nagging works.  Okay, she didn't nag me, but knowing that someone might actually try to read this has inspired me to get on it.  Since my suspected new reader is a horse person, I will tend to talk about that more.

As you may recall, I was working with a young white stallion pretty regularly until daylight savings time.  That loss of evening daylight really messed me up.  For a while all I could manage to do in the evening was feed the horses and that was it.  Of course, that process got a lot more difficult because of the oil well next our house.  It is unsafe to have the horses around during the drilling process.  Mainly due to the mud pit that has oil residues in it.  So, the oil company hired us to put in a new fence (which was nice) and put the horses on the other side.  If you reference the map on the 14 July 2011 post it is just north of tank 2 and goes from West to East.  The upshot of this is that we have been feeding the horses in the pens for several months now.  Despite the daily feedings, they have started roaming through the old fence on the east perimeter and getting into that deer lease.  Recently, Anna, Dad and I have been rebuilding that fence and clearing a path for the Gator to go down in.  Before, it had been overgrown by thicket.

It was a cold day one afternoon so I was going to open up the barn in the pens for the horses.  I figured I should lead one of them in there so they would know about it.  Silver (the white stallion, I know it's cheesy, but I like it) is actually the easiest horse to catch so I started walking down the fence toward his bucket.  His back end was out to the pens, but kind of pointing toward me, so I took a cautious approach.  It is good policy to not walk up to a horse or cow with it's back anywhere near you just straight on.  You kind of saunter up, side first, not to turn all your vitals to the dangerous end.  So, I'm easing down the fence, right leg in front and my hand out so I can push off him if he swings all the way around.  He sure enough did.  He came around and my hand was right there.  Instead of letting me push off, I think it spooked him.  He jumped forward and landed a kick to my thigh.  A person knows in his head that a horse has power, but until you feel it, it just doesn't sink in.  I shudder to think of what could have happened, especially if I hadn't turned my body.  He easily could have broken my leg regardless, and at first I though he did.  I jumped back, grabbed the fence, gave a brief thought to throwing everything I had in my hands at him to show him I was not pleased, but wasn't sure if I was in condition to do battle, so I quickly limped out back to the truck.  Fortunately, Anna was there and she drove me home.

God was with me that day.  I was out for the count for the rest of the day.  I could barely walk around the house, but we iced it really good and in a day or two I was back to normal.  He did manage to get my keys.  He broke the keyless entry clicker off my key chain, but other than that there was no damage.  I barely even bruised.  I finally decided that I just spooked him.  He is pretty gentle, but he loves his food.  The next training step will be to get in there with a buggy whip and break him of turning his back to me in the first place.  After that he will be ready for the saddle.

Almost Winter

So much for posting a lot during the summer.

A lot has happened since the last time.  Ol' Belle was bit by a government issue rattlesnake and died.  Not long after that, Grandmother's dog fell to the same fate.  She has since gotten another dog, a golden labrador.  Nice dog, but it is still learning how to stay at the house in the morning when I leave for work.

I'm still subbing, and liking it less and less.  I have a couple of ideas on how to make more money with the ranch next year, but it always takes time.  I have started working with Silver.  He's plenty gentle after feeding him and Mama Horse last winter, which is good.  I've never started a horse from scratch and I am taking my time and making it as trauma-less as possible.  He is really making it easy on me.  I put a blanket and surcingle on him every time I work him (try to do this daily, but don't always).  I pick up his feet a little bit, throw the saddle pad on several times, brush him sometimes, and then start longeing him.  I'm training him now to change directions by just switching hands with the lead rope.  He's picking it up pretty quickly.

I put the McClellan on him not long ago.  I didn't tie the stirrups down short enough and after a couple of steps at the trot those stirrups gigged him in the side and as gentle as he is, he can sure jump.  Other than that, he has never gotten out of sorts or fussed too much.  I look forward to when I can ride him.  I'll try to do better to keep everyone posted.

Almost Summer

Not much has happened since the last posting, but I don't want y'all to forget about me and I certainly don't want to forget about you.  I am pretty sure that the young heifer is actually a really young cow and that she had a calf.  We saw them both again on Saturday and even though we didn't see him actually drink, we saw a lot of nuzzling and parental type behavior.  Fine!  There were only a certain number of cows we palpated last year that registered as pregnant, so any of those that we didn't get to that have calves are gravy.  We have eight on the ground now.  It is getting increasingly tricky to match them up.  They also have a tendency to keep changing colors.  Not a lot, but a brown calf may go to light red or black.  So, I would like to start tagging them as soon as possible.  Some of them are almost big enough, but I think I will wait a bit longer.  I hate to tag in the middle of the summer, but if we get an early start it won't be too traumatic.

Anna and I fixed some holes in the Mineral Box Field fence, but we have more work to do on that.  It's slow going.  Fencing is tedious.  Over the years, the trees have grown up around the fences and you can't even get to the fence in places.  I dream of the day when you can drive down all of our fences in a tractor and follow along with a gasoline trimmer or posion and keep the vegetation down.  We are a long way from that.  It will take rebuilding fence in another place or bulldozing, but until then, I intend to just clear a good path to wherever I need to get the gator for a fence repair job.

I am also developing a philosophy on mowing.  There are a lot of pastures that need extra attention.  They need chainsaw work on some trees that have grown up in the middle and on the edges.  However, it is important to not lose what we did along those lines last year.  Anna made lots of progress wiggling around behind barns and between thickets, especially up close to the house.  I want to make sure that we just mow over those areas once, so it doesn't get grown up again.  Keeping the pastures mowed is a full time job.  When I think about it at school, it pains me that I'm not working on it.  Of course, summer is coming.

Speaking of summer, I am pleased that although we have had some hot days, we have also had some cool days.  It's almost June and it is not sweltering yet.  We had about an inch of rain a couple of days ago.  We are already going into the summer in better shape than last year.  There are some dire predictions about another drought, but because of some late rains and cooler weather, I don't think it will be as bad.  The only real issue is that we don't have a surplus of hay like we did last year.  Dad is cutting some of his jobs on halves and thirds, I think.  That will help.  If we get extra we can always sell and make some good money.

Alas, I have given up the idea of working with Sarge.  A local girl is coming out to pick him up and ride him for a couple of weeks to smooth him out.  Hopefully, this will take the edge off enough for me to get him up to speed the rest of the way.  I really need to get some training on horse training.  We have some good potential out there and I would like to figure out how to break them without breaking myself.  I know there are trainers out there that "whisper" to horses, but I also know that most of what they work with is handled from a very young age.  Our horses are just not like that.

All in all, things are going well.  God is continuing to take care of our needs and I know that He will do so during the income-poor summer.  So, your support in prayers and visiting the blog here are greatly appreciated.

Sneaky Cows

The calves are really coming now.  Some of them from unexpected corners.  Anna and I were driving out to look at cows one day and we saw one of the heifers that we just let out standing off by herself.  I thought it was a little strange and then I noticed that she seemed to have a full bag.  Weird.  We drove on to the other cows.  She managed to catch up with us.  This time she had a tiny little calf in tow.  Now it's more than weird.  This cow is supposed to be just over a year old, which means that it was bred at about three months.  Okay.  I maay have made a mistake in matching up cows and calves last year.  I'm still trying to perfect the system.  So, now I have to go into the database and correct the birthday.  It is possible that I pegged her to the right mama cow, but she was one of last year's calves still nursing.  Or, I could have just guessed.  I will not be doing that this year.  The bottom line is that we are still working out the kinks in the system.

That was the mistake.  Now I will tell you where we did good; or at least better.  Since a couple of weeks after we turned the heifers out, we have been missing heifer number 59.  We've been wondering about it.  Saturday, Dad and Linda and I were driving through town and some other pastures to get to our hay field.  One of our neighbors has a herd of black angus-type cows and they are all tagged with similar tags.  I started to mention to Dad (almost in jest) that if he sees a tag number 59 it's ours.  Right about that time, we both saw a fresh Bar Z brand on one of them.  Her head was behind a tree, but I told Dad the number before seeing it.  I think he was impressed by that.  So, we have a fence issue somewhere, but we did find our missing cow.  It also is an argument in favor of continuing to brand our cows.  With the whole world going to identical cows it is probably a good idea.

Also on Saturday, Dad brought the bull down.  We are moving the breeding season up a couple of months.  Last year the extreme heat kind of put the damper on the amorous spirit I guess.  This is why we had kind of a poor calf crop.  So, we are bumping it up a bit.  The calves will be born in the middle of winter, but winters are so mild here that it shouldn't make that much of a difference.  We'll probably palpate in September or October of this year and wean around the same time next year.  I think it's a better schedule for marketing and production, but we'll see.

Crow Ranch Work Camp and Bucking Horse Ride

It's been an interesting couple of weeks here at the Crow Ranch.  We have had our second Crow Ranch Work Camp.  This time, we had three young gentlemen, former students from my Leadership Development Corps days.  They are now 9th and 10th graders.  A great bunch of guys they are.  I am pleased to note that there are kids out there that work hard, are respectful, sensible, and well, clean. 

The night they arrived, we got settled in, Anna went to go buy groceries and we watched the movie "Signs".  It may be kind of a tradition now, as we did this last time.  The next morning, we started off with a devotional based on the movie.  I had done a similar thing back when I was the Discipleship Coordinator at Clear Lake Baptist.  That day we repaired the tank lot fence.  Good hard work.  I will have to remember to include rubber boots on the list for next time.  Those poor boys got muddy.    Not that they cared.  In fact, I think they probably enjoyed it.  We went to bed early as the vet was coming the next day at 7 for that day's job.

The second day was our big job.  We still had the heifers in the pens at the time and they all needed branding, a brucellosis vaccination, and some of them needed to be dehorned.  The vet had a busy day planned, so we had to be working by 7:30 to 8:00 and be done by 9:00.  We decided that we could not make the vet wait while we branded and that we would do the vaccinations and dehorning first.  Then, after he was gone, we would run them through again and brand them.  We had a lot of help.  In addition to Alex, Jarrod, and Daniel, we also had Dad and Melissa.  A good crew.  Melissa scribed, I drove the cows down the chute, Daniel worked the blocking gate.  Anna tended fire.  Alex and Jarrod worked the chute.  Once again, the boys impressed me.  They were quick on their feet, focused on the job at hand.  I'm also proud to say that they had a good time.  Work of this nature hones the reflexes, works the muscles, and builds confidence.  It's the kind of thing that young men need.

After we ran them through the first time, the vet left and we just did it again.  All in all, we worked about 19 head twice.  That afternoon, the boys, Anna, and Melissa took a break.  Dad and I decided to mess with Sarge.  I had been working with him a little, but not much.  We got him saddled without too much issue.  We snubbed him up to Scout and I even got on a couple of times without issue.  I guess it was just going a little too well.  Dad was on Scout and I reached down to slip my off side foot into its stirrup.  That spooked Sarge enough that he pulled back, although instead of reaching the end of the lead and having it give a little it just stopped.  Now, the reason you snub a horse up to a mature horse when you are doing this is to make sure that the young horse can't buck or shy, or move around too much.  Scout is not the best horse for this.  When Sarge hit the end of his lead, Scout started bucking.  This made it scary for Sarge.  So, now Dad and I riding two bucking horses tied together.  If you want father-son bonding this will do it, but I wouldn't recommend it.  Dad held the lead in place till I could get off (which didn't take long).  Then we had more problems.  Parents don't listen sometimes.  I told him to let go an get off, but he wouldn't do it.  In fact, he couldn't.  The lead wrapped so tight that it wouldn't come off the horn.  I started trying to undo the lead from Sarge's halter.  It finally came loose and Dad dismounted/rolled off before Scout bucked him into the big pecan tree.  No one was really hurt.  Dad kind of cut his finger trying to get the lead loose, but nothing serious.  Right after that, I got a call from Anna, "What is going on out there?"  She and Melissa had been watching the whole thing so that took some explanation.  Scout and Sarge calmed down pretty quickly, so we did the rest without Scout.  Just Dad on the ground.  I got up and down a couple of more times and walked around the yard.  No problems.  Since then, I have worked with him some more, but really need a second person to hold the lead while I saddle him and get on.  What I have been doing is leading him up to a couple of cinder blocks and stepping up on them.  He is definitely getting better.  One of my goals in life is to be as spry as Dad when I'm in my sixties.  He won't let himself get old.  I will do the same.

That night, we had our devotional by the fire.  We talked about moral actions and Christian behavior for young men.  How they should look and act differently than the rest of the world.  How the Bible paints a different picture of manhood than the world.
 The next day, we had our last devotional, then just drove around the place looking around.  We ended with moving a pile of brush over to the burn box, then we chillaxed until parents arrived.

How I would love to do this more often.  How I would love to make this a regular thing and it expand it.  I would love to have a horse for each of them to ride.  Praise God that He promised us that if we are faithful over little, we will be ruler over much.  I intend to have them back in the summer.  They get a lot of work done and they get great experiences and I hope they get some discipleship as well.  Daniel also cleans my guns!  I was a little hesitant at first, but his parents are cops.  When his mom showed up to take them home, she told me that he cleans their guns all the time and that he does a good job.  Definitely will have them back.  We are also going to have Nathan's kids here for awhile during the summer too.

Adventure Pups!

23 March 2012, Thursday, 1209, Liberty Middle School Library

We had a very traumatic occurrence the other day.  Our pups...okay, they are really dogs, but they are much smaller than what I normally call dogs...got out.  Daisy and Honey were discovered almost exactly a year ago out in the Old Field.  We tried to find homes for them, but no one was interested, so we ended up keeping them.  They have been a real source of pleasure and comfort during some challenging times.  Tuesday, they presented their own challenge.  Around one o'clock, they managed to get out in to the front yard.  Of course, the front yard is the ranch and also the neighboring leases; and the highway.  We looked, and we came inside.  We looked again, and we came inside.  It got dark, we came inside.  I finally decided to walk down the road again calling them.  It started to rain.  This got really upsetting.  I couldn't imagine them out there in the flooding woods by themselves.  I pleaded to God to return them.  I paced back and forth up the road fretting for them.  Finally, I just decided.  I'm going to keep looking until I find them.  From then on, I felt much better.  I walked back to the house and comforted Anna.  She had printed out some bulletins just in case they went out to the road and someone found them.  We drove to town and posted the signs, then headed back.  Borrowed Grandmother's 4-wheeler and started looking.  It was 9 o'clock by now.  We went into the neighbor's deer lease.  Anna shined the flashlight into the woods and I navigated the flooded roads.  Every few dozen yards, we would stop and holler for them and listen.  Finally, on the way out of the neighbor's lease, we paused, hollered, and heard a little yipping.  Right ahead of us, coming out of the woods was Honey.  Wet and miserable.  We snatched her up, and Anna greeted her tearfully.  I am still almost emotionless.  Ever since deciding to keep looking, I was on mission.  It's good to have a mission.

So, we decided to go ahead and take Honey back before looking for Daisy.  Daisy would be the challenge.  She is a beagle and when she gets a scent, the rest of the world absolutely disappears.  Nevertheless, our mission was not yet over.  This time, we went to our little tract of land that is adjacent to where we found Honey.  I figured they wouldn't be too far from each other.  On one of our stops, I heard a rustling from behind, turned, and saw an armadillo.  If Daisy's around she might be on that scent.  We waited a bit longer, and sure enough, there she was.  After about ten hours, it was finally over.

God came through for us on this one.  Why He allowed them to get lost in the first place, I don't know.  Perhaps He wanted to demonstrate how He feels about us when we go off the reservation.  Or perhaps it was a lesson in not giving up.  Something interesting occurs to me when I compare the incident to finding them last year.  For those who remeber, Anna, Melissa (her sister) and I were driving in the Old Field in the truck when we saw 5 puppies.  Two of them came to us, but three ran off into the woods.  We looked for a while to find them, but after a couple of hours, we decided to let it go.  This year it was different.  These were our dogs now.  For ten hours, we worried, we agonized, we got cold and wet and we would have done it even longer.  When we found them, I was ready to go all night.  These dogs are cute, they are friendly, and they are fun, but they also still pee on the carpet, chew things up and offer no help in getting work done.  We searched for them because they were our dogs.  Not because they are cute, but because they are ours.  They are not just Daisy and Honey, they are Daisy Crow and Honey Crow.  They are family.  That is their value.

It is a picture of my value.  I can teach.  I can lead.  I can ride a horse.  I pay too much attention to my emotions.  I'm lazy sometimes.  I can't run.  None of these qualities good or bad has anything to do with how long the Father will look for me when I'm lost in the woods.  The same goes for you too.

Spring is springing.

28 February 2012, Tuesday, 1251, Liberty Middle School Library

Okay, three weeks is not so good, but it's better than 6 months.

Finally got some more calves in the pens.  I was putting out hay the day after my last blog.  I opened up the gates to the calf patch to put down some hay and the cows followed me.  When I saw that I had at least four calves, I shut the gate on them.  We had a total of six new calves, but alas, the next day, the dogs started chasing them and two of them jumped out.  Still, we will have had most of our calves weaned.  The others might get sold depending on how they act.  We do not want to raise another crop of crazy cows.  Well, at least not as crazy as they are now.

Yesterday, I made a bunch of trips to the hay field and brought back the rest of the hay.  It felt good to finish something.  I will put out hay three more times.  Dad and I decided to start stretching the hay.  I will put out hay for the calves and the cows every Monday, with the 13th being the last day.  That will give us one odd roll, so I will put it out in the middle of this week to help them adjust.  I went back and forth from the hay field 5 times yesterday and the cows had no interest in me whatsoever.  They are getting their sustenance from the grass, as it should be.  So, the big question about having enough hay for the winter has been answered.  Praise God for a mild winter!  Sorry to all you people complaining about the skiing.

I will be glad to not have to feed the calves every day.  I am thinking about replacing that chore with riding Sarge.  Or at least messing with him.  Sarge is the horse that jerked out from underneath me last year and twisted my knee.  It will be a good experience.  I'm 41 and need to start learning low impact horse training.  This will force me to do it.

Our next big projects will be to review all the border fences before the summer and to mow the pastures before the tractor is needed up north for Dad's hay operations.  With me putting out hay every couple of days, the cows hardly need fences at all.  When the hay stops and they start hunting grass in the summer is when they become an issue.  I am thinking about how to track the quality and repairs done on our fences using power point and excel.  Cowboy geek.  That's me.

Rebel is going to the chiropractor on Friday.  I'll let y'all know how it goes.

Knock, Knock, Anybody There?

08 February 2012, Wednesday, 0942, Liberty Middle School Library

I offer no excuses.  I look shamefully down at my feet and ask your forgiveness.  On the remote chance that you have been wondering why I have not written anything in the last six months, I can only say that it has been a little rough.

I accepted a long term sub job teaching Ag at a local school district.  This lasted for a semester, until they can bring the new guy on board.  You would think that I could handle something like that, but it was surprisingly hard.  Having an agricultural economics degree does little to prepare you to teach a high schooler how to be in FFA, or to show a heifer, or to design a floral arrangement.  The whole experience also demonstrated how far removed I am from the "country" culture.  Students in this 1A rural school just did not get me.  I don't have a pronounced accent.  I sometimes drive a Camry to work.  I don't dip, curse, wear cammo, hunt, or go mudding (on purpose).  I think education is a good thing.  I was not a man's man to those kids.  Never mind that I served my country overseas (wearing cammo), work crazy wild cows, and ride horses.  It was a discouraging experience.  The best I can say is that the outlook these students had was provincial.  It did educate me on some of the things to watch for when we rear kids of our own.  It also taught me the importance of point of view.  Back in Clear Lake, I was the redneck.  Here, I'm a citified dandy.  Very strange.

The ranch did not get my full attention during this time.  Rebel is still unridable.  I think I am going to take him to a horse chiroprator.  I'm that desperate.  Only a handful of cows were pregnant when we tested them in December.  That was a blow.  It was so hot during breeding season that the bulls didn't do their work for us.  That's hot.  The good thing is that we have a really good crop of heifers.  We are feeding most of them and gentling them down.  The balance of them are still in the pasture; which is a story in and of itself.  They will make a good crop of cows and we will continue to sell cows that don't perform.  Many of the ones we have are past the time to be culled.  We are putting our stock in the new ones.

The most frustrating problem we are having is penning cows.  Many of them are nice and gentle, but some of them just take off to the woods at the first attempt to move them.  Other cows and calves follow them.  If we had more than one working horse and some good dogs, we could do it.  We've tried trapping them, but the cows in question won't even go in a trap.  I think tomorrow I will try putting out hay in the calf patch.  I need to get some water to the calves in the pens to do this.  If this doesn't work, then I will have to ask for some local help.

Other questions we have to answer are what we are going to do with this year's crop.  We might be forced to sell heifers and beef calves in order to generate the necessary income for the year.  We will certainly be selling more of the cows.

I'm not complaining.  God has his purposes that are beyond what we can see.  I think one of them is to teach us to learn to trust Him.  Things keep breaking, we keep trying to do things and failing, but the lesson is to not complain.  We are trying to commit it to God, understanding that the ranch, cows, horses, et al belong to Him.  He is demonstrating that it is His.  Maybe when we can say, "Well, we didn't get them penned again, but that's okay.  We'll try again later," without all the emotion and hand-wringing, we will be there, or at least closer.

In case you didn't notice I genericized the title of the blog.  "Green Acres...Without the Money" was memorable and funny, but ultimately not the right thing to confess.  I'm no "word of faith' guy, but the Bible does say that there is power in the tongue, so I'm changing the title.  If you have suggestions I'll take them.  I've got some ideas, but haven't gotten them worked out yet.

Hopefully, I will be back again soon.  Thanks for your support and prayers.

Sometimes things don’t work

04 August 2011, Thursday, 1543, Home Patch

Pretty tired today.  I’ve had some trouble sleeping and I’m not sure why.  I think I kind of messed up my schedule last week during Vacation Bible School and haven’t quite got back on track yet.  The heat may have something to do with it as well.  Yesterday, we did some clean up work in the Orchard behind Grandmother’s house.  One of us was on the tractor, while the other did pick up.  I cannot seem to get a chainsaw to work with any consistency.  It has always been like this.  I can get one to run for a day or half a day and then it will quit and I can no longer get it started.  The best luck I’ve had recently is with Dad’s and it’s a Stihl, which are great, but I used it for about a day and a half and now I can’t get it to keep running.  So, I cut some of the smaller stuff down with a hackknife and hauled junk around by hand.  Pretty exhausting.  There is more to do, but we are getting ahead of it.

Tomorrow, I need to shore up some of the fences for the horse pasture.  A reenactor friend is moving out of state and I am taking care of his horse until he can find a place to put his.  I doubt his horse will run off, but it’s good to be on the safe side.  Our horses have no reason to press the fences, they are getting fed and are happy, but when you change the dynamic it makes you wonder.

Rebel is still not right in his back.  That is another thing that I will try tomorrow.  The vet came out on Tuesday and we poked, prodded, tried to ride, and observed, but he couldn’t come up with a reason for his issues.  I gave him some bute today and will do so tomorrow and try to ride him gently to see how he does.  Bute is like horse ibuprofen.  People use advil to get through the pain while healing up.  I will try to give him a chance to heal up gradually.  If not, then I will take him back to the vet and try some additional diagnostic steps.  I can’t help but worry about him a little bit.

I think we finally have all of our calves identified. At least all the ones that are tagged, which is only about half of what we have.  The prices right now are really good, so I need to identify which ones might be good for sale and try to identify them somehow or just get them tagged like the rest of them.

Yankee-Snake

01 August 2011, Monday, 0800, Home Patch

We expanded our tiny little backyard area for the puppies on Saturday.  Now, it is the actual size of a backyard.  I hate to admit it, but my wife might be right about something.  She proposed the theory that the puppies would be more inclined to use the bathroom outside if they had more room.  I contended that it would not make a difference.  So far, we have not had the problem that we had before.  I am happy to be wrong on this one.

While I was working on the fence, Anna was pulling up all the poison ivy that had rooted in the backyard.  Our special soap usually works pretty good and I think it is working on her, but my brief encounter with it on Saturday is not going well.  Anyway, I am pretty convinced that alcohol and vitamin C work pretty good.  The bad rash on my arm is drying up relatively quickly.

There is a reenactment coming up soon and I have yet to test Rebel.  His back was still bothering him a couple of weeks ago, even though I rode him a few weeks before that and he was fine.  I will try to ride him this morning.  That way if he doesn’t do well, I still have time to call the vet.  What’s weird is that I can’t seem to find a sore spot.  Maybe he is faking it.

A couple of days ago, I was getting ready to take a shower and Anna was in the soon to be expanded backyard.  I heard her yell my name out.  I hollered back, letting her know my condition, then she returned something about a snake.  I threw on some shorts and tried to decide what I had that would make a good snake weapon.  A gun is not the best thing to kill a snake with, unless it is a shotgun.  I got into a pistol battle with a tiny moccasin once and expended a great deal of ammo.  They are just a really small target.  Plus, you have to deal with the ringing in your ears and cleaning your weapon.  The hackknife was in the Gator, which was down the road in the red barn.  Then I realized I had the perfect weapon.  I grabbed my 1860 Light Cavalry Saber and headed to the backyard.  Anna was leaned over with a long stick, pinning the intruder to the ground.  It was a moccasin all right; small, but decidedly unwelcome.  My trusty saber made short work of him.  Anna did a great job and it illustrates the importance of being married on the frontier and snake killing etiquette.  It’s always better to have two people when encountering a snake.  You need one person to get the weapon and the other to keep an eye on (or in this case, trap) the animal.  It is unsettling to be alone, go back in the house to get a weapon and then find that it is gone.

So, I will get to brag to my reenactor buddies that my saber has actually dispatched an invading enemy.

Ranch Work vs. Ranch Management

27 July 2011, Wednesday, 0853, Home Patch

Dad came down yesterday.  Our focus was ranch management, which means that we didn’t really do a whole lot of actual physical work.  We looked at the hay fields to see about cutting them again soon and we spent a lot of energy in thinking about how to fix our pens.  If you’ll remember, a storm a week or so ago, knocked down an old dead tree and took out some of the pens with it.  That section of fence is pretty easy to decide about.  We are going to replace it exactly like we had it.  However, the other end of that stretch of fence is in poor shape and also needs to be replaced.  The problem with it is that there are two big old tallow trees there.  Our options are to have the trees removed and put in the fence in the same place or to bypass the trees and angle the fence.  This would have some advantages.  Ultimately we decided that we didn’t know what to do, but I am going to get with the local bulldozer guy about pushing those trees down.  I firmly dislike having trees as part of our pens, or even too many trees around the pens.  They drop branches on the boards and grow into the fence itself.  It’s nice to have a few for shade.  Once again, my philosophy is to cut the tallow trees and what’s left will be about right.

I did get what looks like it might be a more serious case of poison ivy than I have had for a while.  The tree that was knocked down was already dead, but it didn’t look dead because of all the poison ivy growing on it.  I thought I was careful to avoid the stuff, but I guess I didn’t do so good.  I am treating it aggressively with Vitamin C and alcohol (rubbing alcohol, that is).  If it doesn’t get better, I’ll hit the clinic for some steroids.  I heard recently that eating poison ivy berries will make you immune.  Maybe so, but it seems to me like it could also kill you.

Burn it all! And the difference between me and Rob Roy

25 July 2011, Monday, 1033, Home Patch

My last entry said that the rest of the day was pretty uneventful, but the day was still young.  I cleaned up, and that afternoon, we went back to the gully where the cow had met her demise.  I still wanted to read the number on the ear, so I brought my rope.  I have told you before that I am no artisan with a lariat, but I surpassed myself this time.  It took me embarrassingly long to rope a cow that could not evade or run.  To my credit, I will say that there were some very awkward branches preventing me from making a normal throw, but by underhand pitching, I could throw the loop over between the horn and the limbs.  I actually got the rope on the horn once or twice, but it slipped off as I tried to take up slack.  At one point I looked down on my hand and saw that a maggot had hitched a ride on my rope and was now crawling on me.  Finally, I got the rope around her whole head, pulled it up a little bit and managed to read the number.  Simple, task complete.  You are probably now wondering what I had been wondering up to that point.  How to get the rope off.

I decided that I would have to pull her out.  She was still too heavy to get her out by hand, so I got a ratchet strap out of the truck.  Tied a bowline, hooked on to the end of the rope (the draw for the gully was too long to get close with the truck) and got her up into the draw.  One final pull was too much, though and I broke the strap.  This dead cow is now beating me if we are keeping score in terms of straps as I had lost a tow strap in the gully earlier in the day.  Now, comes the rough part.  I had to force myself close enough to the animal to work the loop off with a hoe.  I did not want to touch the thing for sure and yanking it around after it had been dead for 24 hours only caused an unholy and vicious stench and vile liquid to emerge from the carcass.  I could only manage to get close enough with a hoe to work the lariat for a few seconds at a time.  In the movie “Rob Roy” the hero manages to evade capture by forcing open a very similar cow, removing the innards and taking refuge inside.  Yes, indeed, there would have been some very happy British Soldiers that day if it were me.  Even if my love of freedom compelled me to force my way inside the carcass, the Soldiers would have surely noticed the intense hacking and retching sounds that the old dead cow was making.

Not much else of note has happened in the last week, ranchwise.  We took a day trip to Schlitterbahn as God had blessed us with some free tickets.  Saturday morning I was at the church for a work day, but got out of there as soon as I could when I learned that the burn ban had been lifted until this morning.  We had several weeks worth of house trash in cans, and some old brush piles from when we had the house put in a year ago.  It was hot outside, but we did our best to burn as much as we could in our burn box.  We didn’t get it all, but I did manage to push the bigger logs over to the burn box with the Kubota.  That along with some mowing we had done really made an improvement in our front yard.  Furthermore, Anna just came in from planting some rose bushes as well.  I’ll put up a picture soon.

Rain, Wind, and Dead Animals

15 July 15, 2011, Friday, 1530, Home Patch

We went to Beaumont yesterday for our Date Day.  As we were heading back it commenced to rain something fierce.  I tried not to get too excited about it until we got back to see what things looked like at home.  I have been disappointed before.  Happily, we got about an inch and a half.  We also got some pretty serious weather.  There were major limbs on people’s roads as we got close to home and we had a good size limb on our road as well.  We decided to see what other damage there might be, so we got in the truck and went on down the Camp Road.  Sure enough, an old tree in the pens went down and it took some of the pens with it.

Before

After

So, we have some work to do, but it is work that we have needed to do anyway.  That section of pens was not in the best of shape to begin with.  By the way, that tree was basically dead.  All of the greenery on it is actually Jurassic size poison ivy.  Cutting that tree up is not an option.  We are going to have to pull it out with a tractor, let everything die on it, then come back later and cut it up.

We also noticed a very strange thing in Tank 3.  There were about half a dozen dead fish.  I expect to see dead fish when there is no rain, but right after a big storm?  I think I figured it out this morning.  I think that tank got struck by lightning and turned our few remaining fish in there belly up.  I’m sure the snakes survived somehow.

This morning, we went to go patch up a good size hole in the calf patch fence.  This fence is particularly organic now, so half of the battle was getting up to it.  Thankfully, I have Dad’s chainsaw and I began cutting our way in.  There was a lot more poison ivy here, so we had to go careful, and then we kept smelling a skunk.  A skunk smell can be a skunk, but it can also be a water moccasin.  The dogs kept digging and barking where a tree had been uprooted and the smell kept coming and going, but I couldn’t find the snake.  So, we put in a post, hung a wire on it, cut all the poison ivy vines at the base of the trees and decided to check the other fences.  We’ll come back to this place later.

Sadly, we found a dead cow.  It was pretty fresh; caught in the gully by the culvert bridge.  I tried to turn her ear up so I could read the tag number, but all I managed to do was drop the tow strap in the death-infested water.  I’ll go back later with a lariat and a hoe or hook.  I’m not the greatest roper in the world, but I shouldn’t have too much trouble roping a dead cow.  I’ll let you know.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful.  We patched some relatively easy holes in the fence.  We road it all the way from the SE corner to about where the Sun Company Road comes in.  We have a lot of work left to do.

The Crow Ranch Cowboy Camp

14 July 2011, Thursday, 1406, Barnes & Noble Starbuck’s-Beaumont

Our big Work Weekend Ranch Camp was a huge success!  The boys got in early Friday afternoon so we took them on a quick trip to MACI’s Feed in Hardin to get some black leg medicine.  When we got back, we got them oriented to the vehicles and the ranch by taking the 4-Wheeler and the Gator out to put out some cubes.  This also got the cows dialed in to the sound of our vehicles, the “Taco Truck” as Anna calls it.  We played a couple of games that night and went to bed early.  As expected, the boys had a little trouble going to sleep that night.

We got up around 6 the next morning and ate a delicious breakfast casserole.  During breakfast, I did a very short devotional (basically just read some scriptures) about what our attitude should be about hard work.  There is a fine line between working hard in order to get God or Man to like us and approve of us and being lazy because God loves us already.  Of course, the perfect scripture for that turned up during our revival a couple of days later, Col. 3:23.  I’ll have to remember that one for next time.

After we had all eaten (including the horses), we went to saddle up Rebel.  This was our first snafu of the day.  Although he did really well at the reenactment several weeks ago, his back seemed to be troubling him again.  There are only the slightest little bumps on his back and they are not tender to the touch, so I don’t know what the problem is.  I will keep doctoring him and keep praying for him.  Anyway, by that time, the other horses were out, so we had to call them back up so I could get Scout saddled.  Scout is not my top horse, but he did really well Saturday.  He had two issues.  The first one is that he gets really spooked about walking up to a man on foot, especially if he has a rope.  Of course, this is a very important part of working cattle and this habit made it difficult.  Also, at the end of the day, he was getting downright stubborn about going back in the pens.  He would just stop and refuse to do what he was told.  We worked it out, but it took some time.

The thing I was worried about the most for the entire weekend was getting the cows into the pens.  It frequently takes two or more cowboys with some good dogs and a fair amount of luck.  A lot of our internal fences are down right now, so when they make a break for the woods, it’s all over.  God was sure with us on this one that day.  I put Daniel (9^th grade) on the 4-Wheeler with Hunter (8^th Grade) in the Gator with Anna.  Age has its privileges.  Poor Hunter got stuck with kind of a boring job, but it was critical.  His job would be to handle the feed sack, while Anna drove.  Daniel would be pushing the herd from the rear on the 4-Wheeler and I would work the critical flanks on the horse.

We got to the Old Field and there were some cows there, but I couldn’t get around them in time to stop them.  I sent the vehicles out to the Savanna by way of the Culvert Bridge road, while I drifted east to the Board Bridge Road.  I gently trotted around them and the cows were all coming up to the Gator just like we needed them to, so I signaled Daniel to come to me and for the Gator to move ahead.  The cows trailed in to Bobcat Woods, just like we wanted them to.  I had Daniel pushing them from behind and I ducked into the thick woods on the west.  They kind of got away from us here.  I got about halfway into Bobcat Woods and saw the Gator, faithfully flapping feed bags and calling them up.  I had expected to see some cows before getting that far.  They had made a break for it, probably off to the east.  I told Anna to head to the Tallow Flat and recommence calling them up and bolted for where I thought the cows were.  Daniel had figured out where they were and was on them too.  The two of us managed to get them turned back to the North and even a little west toward the gully crossing that we wanted.  We got them across and Anna and Hunter were waiting for them, tolling them on toward the Old Field.  Many of them went right for the Tallow Thicket so I followed them in to keep them on course.  Daniel did really well here.  He knew exactly where to be and put the pressure on them just right, keeping them moving North while I kept them from getting away in the woods.  Anna and Hunter were also just in the right spot to keep them moving forward.  Going over the plan several times the night before when we were driving around really helped.

Once we got them into the Old Field, getting them into the pens was pretty easy.  I put Daniel up on the tank bank next to the gate so they couldn’t go by the opening and Scout and I cleaned the rest up nicely.  I was extremely gratified.  God was with us.  The boys did an outstanding job and the cows did well too.  We had enough calves to work in the pens and it was only 0915.  That was the complicated and tricky part.  Now, the dangerous and physically demanding part would begin.

Note:  Please see the 01 June 2011 entry “Never let a cow step on your neck” for a detailed description on how to work calves.

Since we had such luck with a thorough briefing on how to pen the cows, I gave a detailed demonstration on how we would tag.  This was also a good thing and helped them out a lot.  All in all the biggest problem we had was my roping skills.  I do all right on foot sometimes, but on a horse, I’m not the greatest.  I’m sure I’ll get better as the years go on, but roping in the pens is hard.  It’s not like in a rodeo, that’s for sure.  The easiest way to catch a calf is when it is passing from your right to your left.  On horseback, the horse’s head is in your way.  I’d try to run the calves in a circle so I could put it right out in front of me, but Scout was not the best at this and the calves got very proficient at ducking behind another cow or staying close to the fence.  What we finally ended up doing was this.  I would hang Scout up in the pens while I and one of the boys went in on foot.  When I roped one, I would pass off the rope to him, go get the horse, and they would pass the rope back.  This system worked pretty well, except for Scout not being great at walking up to people on foot.  This reminds me of another thing that I like about Rebel over Scout and that is the cavalry training.  Rebel has a different gear for his back end.  I can push his rear around with my feet.  This is so when I am in a saber duel with a Yankee cavalryman I can maneuver around to his back left where he can’t put up his guard.  Also, when I am in the pens, with a calf running around at the end of the rope I can keep myself from getting tangled.  I need to teach this to Scout.  I had a calf dallied off on the horn coming past my left side.  When I was trying to ride him around the snubbing post, he took off hard to my right and that rope almost pulled me off.  On Rebel, I could have kept him in line with the calf with a quick flick of the leg, but Scout had to figure it out on his own.  He did, but only just before I went off.

Anyway, we did good that day.  We tagged a total of six.  The boys did most of the holding and Daniel even threw a couple.  Most of the time we just jumped on them when they flopped down and once I put a foot rope on a big one.  Hunter showed his sand by hanging on to the rope beyond the point where it made sense.  He got pulled down a couple of times, but darn it, he wouldn’t let go until I told him to.  I guess if he were my son, I wouldn’t have told him to let go at all (see the entry “Hang on, Jason, Hang on!”), but since these kids were borrowed, I tried to take care of them.

We had done 5 calves when the sun came out.  It had been cloudy and even rainy up to that point, so the weather was pretty cool.  After the sun came out, we did one more.  The kids were pretty glad to be done, but according to their folks, they are still talking about it.  Fantastic!

We had a restful evening and went to Church and Sunday School on Sunday which was extremely important to the whole scheme of things.  It was very nice to be able to fellowship these kids in the Lord the way I could not when I was their teacher.

The weekend was excactly what I had hoped for.  Anna and I have talked a lot about what future iterations will look like and I will take some notes on what went well, what could have gone better (not much), and what we would like to accomplish in the future.  I will take all of my faithful readers along.  Thank you for your prayers.