Our trip to the ranch this spring was May 29, 30 and 31st.  Actually we drove out on Thursday the 29th after work and didn’t get there until about 11:00 p.m. our time.  We were a little behind schedule because Thursday morning when I went for my walk along the east line, I saw that the bulldozers who worked on the cul-de-sac for the Vanderbeek development had cleared out all the trees and graded away the grass in about a 100 foot area in our tree line.  Ken called Doug to talk about it.  This will be a topic for a future post.

Anyway, Jim decided that this year we would match up the cows and calves before taking them out to the pasture.  There were three truck loads of cattle and only one had already been matched up.  That left us about 80 or so cows and calves to work with.  So after the first truck was unloaded, we started the sort process.  Jim brought 3 or 4 cows down the alleyway to the corral where the calves were penned up . . . and where we were waiting to find out the ear tag numbers on the cows.  It was a hot day and the wind would blow the dust up in our faces, especially when the calves got to running around.  Since the second truck with the rest of the cows and calves hadn’t arrived yet, we were only matching up 50% of the cows. By the time the second truck came, we all were sweaty with dust on our faces that had turned to mud. We were a pretty sight!!!  But to make a long story short, and it is a long story since we usually spend about an hour or two out in the pasture waiting for the cows and calves to pair-up and this whole process took about six hours, we finally found a mama for every calf.

I forgot to mention that Jim and Judy now have cattle of their own.  They bought six hereford cows.All but one has had their calf and one of the cows had twins.  She didn’t have enough milk for two so they have been bucket feeding one of them.  And they bought another cow (Angus) to fill in for the calf’s mama.  She’s getting to be quite a pet.  This is Ken helping Jim and Judy with branding and vaccinating the youngest calf.  

Jim also bought an Angus bull.  Here he is branding the bull.

That was Friday . . . then on Saturday we met the cattle trucks at Jim’s ranch south of Tryon.  These cattle are owned by two brother, Brad and Terry. Judy was telling us that Terry has cancer.  I hardly recognized him when I saw him.  His hair has turned completely white, he almost has an albino look to him.  He has a daughter that is getting married in a little over a year and he has twin sons about 9 or 10 years old. One of the pictures I took of Terry below, he is looking out over the corrals and the cattle that have been unloaded.  I was trying to image what he must be thinking  while standing there.  Praying that he will still be around in the fall when they send the trucks back to the ranch to pick up the cattle, to see these small scrawny new born calves grow almost as big as their mama’s after being out on the ranch all summer. And looking on, being able to walk his daughter down the aisle, see his boys graduate from high school so many things that many of us take for granted.

Judy talking with Terry.  The guy in the cowboy hat is Marvin, these are his corrals.  Ken and then Jim.

 This is bandit . . Marvin’s dog.  He loves it when the cattle come.  He feels he has a job to do, snap at the heels of every cow that comes off of the truck. Marvin’s other dog, Dolly, is hiding back in the weeds.

Usually when we move the cattle from Marvin’s corrals to Jim’s land, we have to cross Marvin’s pasture and the Fuller Ranch.  This year both ranches still had cattle close by so Jim decided that we would take the cattle down the road.  It really worked well. Judy blocked off one of the roads and Mrs. Fuller blocked off the other.  It didn’t take us long to get them out to the well.

We will be going back to North Platte in June for the Buffalo Bill Rodeo.  Then again in October to round-up the cows and calves and send them home again.