Head Wounds Bleed a Lot and First Branding

No substitute job on Monday, so I got to stay home and hit the ranch work hard.  It was one of those days where the sheer number of tasks that we had to do was so overwhelming that we decided just to pick something and be satisfied with getting that done.

We fed the horses and then went to go look at the cows.  We have been missing Cow #35 for a couple of weeks so we started looking for her.  At the time, I was afraid that she went off in the woods to have a calf and being a first year heifer that she had trouble and we lost her.  Our cows normally have easy births, but you never know, so we started skirting the edges of the woods.  I dismounted and started walking through the woods, smelling for dead cow.  It was here that I made my first stupid mistake of the day.  There was a small log lying in my path and I stepped over it.  About 8 inches to my left I saw a rattle.  I mean I just missed him.  You should always step on the log before stepping to the other side.  So, I called for Anna and she brought me an ax that was in the gator.  ‘Nuff said.

We went home for lunch and started some clearing around the house.  There have been some old fence lines that needed to be taken out, so we hit those.  I cut some tallow trees under the power line to the house.  I was very careful not to make a mistake here, as this could have taken me out.  It is usually a simple matter to fell a tree in the direction you want, but trees growing up in brush are seldom straight.  Invariably, they are leaning away from the direction you want them to fall.  I have more clearing to do here, but if I choose the order I cut the trees correctly, then I can use existing trees to block the ones I’m cutting from the line.  Anyway, it looks a lot better right around our house.  That kind of work always feels good to do.  It is nice to look at a job and know you are done.  Of course, we still have to pick all this trash up.  Then it will look really nice.  It was in doing this, that I made my second mistake of the day.  I was chopping at some vines with a hackknife and reached up to pull them down, they pulled free suddenly and I hit myself in the head with the backside of the knife.  It hurt, but not too bad.  As I was walking around shaking it off, I figured I should check my head and pulled my hand away, covered in blood.  I staunched it with my bandanna and we went inside and put on some pain-free (yeah, right) liquid skin and that was the end of it.

We decided that we did need to repair the Old Field Fence by the trap before the day was over.  However, when we got over there, cows were in the Old Field.  We took the opportunity and drew some of them into the lane and shut the gap.  The calves were not all there, but we reckoned that they would work their way in to the trap like last time.  We started repairs to the fence, then called it a day.

The next night I saddled up Scout and called a buddy from Sunday School as well as Grandmother and Aunt Josey.  Anna and I were very relieved to get the calf mentioned in the last blog tagged.  He’s a bull after all, so we didn’t have to brand him.  The main problem we had was that two calves got out.  One slipped out an old gate that can’t be tied tight enough to hold a calf.  The other slipped into the tank lot under a gate.  We went in to get him, but he braved the mud hole into the Calf Patch and got out.  True, we should have shut the gate, but my help was getting low on time and we decided to call it quits.  We worked 4 calves, branding 3, and tagging 2 (2 of them had tags already).  We had a good time and got to break in a new hand from my Sunday School class.  Jim had done some bullriding in the rodeo, but since that is useless for actual ranchwork, we were relying on his practical experience in working his uncle’s ranch in Mexia.  In other words, he is not afraid to throw down the rope and body tackle a calf if necessary.  In working ranch world, you don’t points for style, you get points for getting the job done.  For instance, a second calf started to go out of the hole by the gate I mentioned.  Jim and I each grabbed a back leg and kept pulling until she was back in.  We threw her right there.  Good moment, but it was spoiled by an angry cow who charged us, so we got up.  God was with us.  We had our backs turned.  I don’t know what made me turn around, but when I did, there she was.  We got up quick.

I do miss  my old war horse, Rebel.  Scout has his uses, but he is way too scared of cows to be much good in the pens.  We worked 4 calves and he only helped us drag in one.  The rest we either worked in the roping pen or drug in by hand.  He would rear up, spin around, but did not want to go in amongst the cows.  Once, a little calf hit the fence and rolled over at Scout’s feet.  He acted like I had thrown a stick of dynamite under him.  He hit the sky and gave a jump or two.  Not good for a cow pony, especially our only one.

It was a good evening.  We got some ‘combat’ in, exercise, society, and work done.  I love branding.  Always have.  We still have several to do, so I will keep you all posted.

The Usefulness of Gratitude

We had quite a frustrating day on back on the 6^th.  One of those times where I just started to question what it is I am doing here.  This is an unfortunate phenomenon.  In reality, I am convinced that God authorized our move to Batson.  It was so incredibly clear at the time.  The main indicator was that the story of Abraham leaving Ur kept coming up independently.  But now, it can be different.  Now that we are here and there is little money and our home site is being turned into an oilfield and we can’t pen cows because we only have one working horse and one untrained cow dog, it is a different story.  Saturday was one of those days.

On Friday night, we saw some cows in the Old Field, so we tolled them in with cubes.  We led them to our newly constructed trap, but the calves would not go through the gate.  However, the mommas to these calves did.  A little calf will not have any trouble getting through a barbed wire fence, even a good one, so I decided to leave them there overnight and let the calves work their way in.  The next morning, we were very pleased to see that the two untagged calves were in there!  Easy, right?  Well, not so much.  All the cows went from the trap in to the Calf Patch, but all four calves balked at the muddy hole they had to go through at the gate.  I gently got around them and managed to ease in three of them, but the one calf left just wouldn’t see the way in.  She eventually got around me, went through the fences out into the Old Field.  The rest of the morning was spent trying to catch that one calf.  I even got him cornered next to the pens.  I tackled him, wrestled, him, but couldn’t get his legs out from underneath him.  That and the mud helped him get away.  [Excuse the fact that the calf tends to change sex in the story.  The general rule is that if a calf is out grazing in the field it can be a girl, but if you are wrestling it “she” becomes a “he”.]  By this time, I was enraged.  I couldn’t wrestle a tiny little calf, something I had done countless times in the past, and I couldn’t rope it because I couldn’t get close enough on foot.  I had had enough.  We reset the trap, hoping that he would come in and we tagged the other one.

I would like to say that this scene was an isolated incident, but frustrations like this are a part of ranching with no money.  Here’s what was different this time.  We went home, ate, and calmed down.  Anna’s devotional had been about being thankful in all things.  We made an effort to do that.  We tagged the one calf that we did get into the pens.  We went and fixed a hole in the fence that we had discovered.  It occurred to me that because we made an effort to change our attitudes and to be truly grateful for the things that had gone right, we were able to see the truth of the day.  That truth was that we did some valuable fence repair.  We tagged half of the calves that we had in the trap, I took a ride on Scout, and I worked with Silver.  This, in reality was a good day.  One of the things that made it good was that because we purposed to be thankful, we could see the good.  May God continue to make it easier for us to do this.

The Newly made Gelding

The veterinarian told us that once Silver was castrated that we could get two months of training done in two weeks if we worked with him every day.  Of course, I did not do that, but I really did work with him most every day and I have to admit, he was a different horse.  Due to his neck injury, which was still healing, and his procedure, we left him in the pens by himself.  After a few days, we gave him the Calf Patch as well.  Most days, I longed him and some days I worked on getting him to come to me.  I was sensitive to the fact that I couldn’t be too soft.  If he didn’t come up to me, or at least let me come up to him, then I would crack the whip and run him around the pens a bit.  That seemed to work pretty well, but I do wonder if it’s not confusing.  I used the same principle in longeing.  He had never been good at longeing at the lope.  I would pay out more lead to give him room to move and he knew that he could get away from the whip.  After a couple of strides, he would stop and face me.  This time, as soon as he did that, I ran to him and cracked the whip, chasing him a bit.  I tried again, going quickly from the trot to the lope in whatever direction he chose.  Whenever he tried to stop, I cracked the whip and if he balked, I ran him around a bit.  In just a few minutes, he was doing as he was told.  When I did stop him, he quickly came to me and put his head in my chest, so I gave him a good rubbing and “made much of him” as the cavalry manual says.

This instantly approaching me after stopping him got a little scary when I put the saddle on him.  I had mentioned before that I put the McClellan on him and the stirrups got him bucking around pretty good. I decided to break that process down, so I put on an old Mac with no stirrups.  I just had the pad and the tree cinched down pretty tight.  It didn’t make a difference.  Once he took a couple of steps, he realized that this thing wasn’t coming off and he took to bucking.  The theory is that you just let them buck until they are tired and realize that the saddle is not going to hurt him.  I would have loved to do that, but he eventually worked the saddle pad out.  Now, the saddle was loose and I worried about him turning it or slipping it off down his legs.  That would be a real disaster that could get him hurt.  He’d buck some, then stop and immediately and quickly come to me for reassurance.  Of course, when he did, that saddle moved on him and he would start bucking again right next to me.  Finally, he calmed down long enough for me to get it off.  That was unsettling too.  If he took to bucking before I had completely freed it, then that could have been a wreck as well.

So, my mission is to now figure out a way to keep the saddle on tight, be able to release it quickly in a jam, and then let him buck with it until he can stand to be longed with it on.  Of course, whenever I think about him doing that with me on board, my heart rate goes way up.  Maybe I will do some additional reading.  I really really and truly do not want to hurt this horse and I don’t want to get on him wondering if he is going to buck.  So, I will have to do a lot of prayer and trusting along with research.  I’ll let you know!

Spring Work Camp

Our Spring Break Work Camp was a success.  We had our three regular customers and they had a good time.  They arrived on Saturday, the 9^th of March and left on the afternoon of Wednesday, the 13^th.  The first day all we did was string the final strands of wire on the New Fence.  One of them has been toying with the idea of being a combat engineer, but is now reevaluating this career choice after unrolling a ¼ mile of barbed wire.

 

The next day was a Sunday, so we intended to spend it going to church and then resting as the Lord commanded.  We did except for trying to turn the young Patriot into the pasture with the three remaining horses up front.  This was a bit of a disaster.  It all worked pretty peaceably at first, but about an hour after we made the switch, I saw all three of them chasing Patriot all over the place.  I ran out there and Patriot was down with Rebel over top of him biting his neck!  I ran him off, throwing at Rebel everything that I could get my hands on.  Patriot just lay there a bit.  There was no mark on his neck.  This makes sense because Rebel was not trying to kill Patriot, but to dominate him.  However, he was a little bloody around his eye and had some blood trickling out of his nose, as well as having a barbed wire cut on his shoulder, but overall he was okay.  We decided that it would be better not to deal with this at this time.  We spent the rest of the day reversing what we had done in moving horses.  Patriot and Sarge were in the New Horse Pasture and then we put Silver in the pens by himself until we could get him castrated.

Monday was when the real work started.  I put the boys on rigging up a fence that goes into the tank so that stock could not cross it.  The goal was to get a trap built that we can lead cows into and leave them overnight without having to worry about water.  That way, if we do pen them, we can leave them until we get around to working them or until there is a sale.  Eventually, when we build up the west fence of the Savanna, Tallow Flat, Bobcat Woods, and Old Field, we can use the Mineral Box Field as a big trap and drive into the pens from there or even separate the herd into two different herds.  This will help gentle down some of the wider cows and keep better track of what bull is sire to the caves.

The fencing into the water was the kind of problem that I love to give kids like this.  I have said that ranching is a giant Army-style Leadership Reaction Course used for training.  My orders to the kids were to make a suitable fence and not to get wet.  They constructed a type of pontoon bridge and the fence is still holding.  They also were successful in fulfilling the secondary objective of staying dry.

 

After that, we rebuilt the short section of fence behind Tank 3 and remade the old gap there.  Then, we patched the worst of the holes in the west end of the Lane Trap.  We were ready to see if we were ready.

We went to go look at the cows and since we had some cubes, we tolled them in.  Unfortunately, they were coming straight for the pens so we bypassed our trap altogether, but we had two calves in the pens!  I decided to put the m all in the calf patch, since the tank lot is weak.  The gate from the Tank Lot to the Calf Patch is pretty muddy, so we were a little concerned about the little calves getting stuck in the hole.  They were too apparently, so they waited until all the other cows had gone through.  Before we knew it, the calves were all we had in the pens!  We shut the gate and did our best to keep them calm while Anna went to go get the tags.  I got the rope and kind of showed the boys how to use it.  The two kids that have never done it got to “rope” a calf, then each of them got to throw one and we tagged it.  They enjoyed it a lot and I enjoyed watching them do it.  I will have to have them back for more, maybe even branding.

 

The next day was a rodeo of racing through fields on the 4-wheeler, the truck, and on Scout.  We didn’t ever get anything else in the pens, but we had a good time trying.

The next morning was the last day and the vet was scheduled to come out early and castrate Silver and clean out his neck wound.  That was not an easy chore.  Silver was as scared as he could be.  I don’t know what we are going to do when we have to pull blood on him in the future.  We snubbed him up to a gate post and squeezed him up between the gate and a cattle panel.  He pulled like a crazy horse, but I had a couple of wraps and the rope was going nowhere.  In fact, it didn’t even let loose when Silver went unconscious.  I had to cut the rope.  I also made a rookie mistake.  The vet told me to take the slack out once and I actually grabbed the rope all the way around.  Silver spooked again and pulled the slack out, catching my fingers in the wrap.  Luckily I had gloves on.  When I took them off later, my middle finger had been cut open and a little piece of fat had been squeezed out.  Ick.  Nonetheless, we got him down and I had the doc do every kind of needle work that I could imagine.  Coggins, rhino, West Nile, the works.  I don’t want to have to do that again for awhile.  He was also successfully castrated.  You have never seen three paler teenage boys, I can tell you that.  When you get to be my age, it doesn’t bother you so much.  Actually, when you get to be my age, you learn to find some tool to fetch, or something else to check on.  On top of that, the vet also cleaned out Silver’s neck wound while he was out.  A few days before our future combat engineer had to rethink his career choice.  Our future combat medic was forced to do the same thing.

The Camp, as always, was fun, successful, and productive.  I dream of the day when I can put all of them on good horses and know for sure that we will be able to pen cows when we want.  God says not to despise small beginnings.  It is the story of our lives right now, but I really see that someday we will look back on these days and appreciate them.  We will know that if God ever brings us a bunkhouse full of campers who will all get a chance to rope, ride, and throw calves it is because God granted us the ability to be faithful over the little things today.

Calving Season

Calves are being born!  I was beginning to worry, because last year we moved our breeding season up a month in order to start the calves in January.  For some reason this did not work and we are still having calves born in late February at the earliest.  I won’t mind moving the schedule up a little more.  One of the main reasons we did this is so that the bull won’t have to do his job in the middle of sweltering heat.  This hurt us for last year’s crop.

The bull works, we know that.  Dad had him up there before we brought him to Batson and calving started there last month.  It is all about timing.  A cow’s gestation is 283 days.  Last year’s breeding season was from April to June.  More than half of our cows are from the 2011 crop of heifers that we fed in the winter of 2011-2013.  Those heifers were born in March, April, and May of 2011.  The other cows are a mix of some younger cows, herd leaders, and older cows that we intend to cull, but haven’t been able to catch or load.  It takes roughly 15 months for a heifer to be old enough to breed.  So, by moving the breeding season up by a month, we are narrowing the window on the breeding season for the 2011 heifers.  I understand that is probably confusing.  I myself had to count months on my fingers several times just to write it.  The upshot of it is that our older cows that were bred are having calves now.  The younger crop of heifers were not mature enough at the beginning of the three months breeding season, so anything we get out of them will happen at the end of this calving season.  This means there is systemic shift of three months.  In other words, the calves that are born this year from the new heifers from 2011 will definitely miss the breeding season in 2014.  The bottom line is that a heifer will be three years old before having a calf.  The bright side is that first calf heifers will not be having calves in the coldest part of the winter, but in the milder Spring.

Right now, we have 10 calves down here in Batson.  The good news is that 2 of these are from the 2011 crop of heifers.  We have already exceeded the calf crop from last year and we will probably have more.  I know of two cows that look pregnant right now.  As the calving season goes on the 2011 heifers will be more likely to calve.

The next mission is to tag them when they are small.  Too small and you could hurt them.  Too big and they could hurt you.  We have already managed to tag three of them and matched them up to their mothers.  In recent years, we have been tagging them about the same time we are weaning them.  That is way too big.  Of course, to brand them, they have to be bigger than they are to tag them, but once again, they could stand to be a lot smaller than when we have been branding them.  Some of the brands on the 2011 crop are awful looking because we waited so long that they had to be done in the chute.  When that happens, they will lie down or move forward or backward so that you can’t reach the brand that you started.  When you have them down on the ground and well and truly held, there is nothing that they can do.

All in all, the calving season is going better than last year.  More calves and we are getting to the tagging part sooner.  I will keep you posted.

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.