Photo Challenge – Morning – Day Four

On our ranch, Morning means our precious hard-working, intelligent, gentle and  sensitive border collie, Patty gets to come into the house for a little AM visit to start everyone’s day on the right foot.

She works so hard for us with the cattle that we like to give her a little appreciation and now we’re all hooked on the morning habit, including Patty.

 

Photo Challenge – Morning – Day Three

I elected to use the Photo Challenge – Morning more as a “Morning Story” for Day three. Today…we check pastures and for sure that means we treat cows and calves. We have come across some incidents of foot rot more so this very moist year and so we need to get going early in the morning!!!

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So, my job is to corral the animals that hubby brings in on horseback. I wait by the corrals in the very abundant grass and weed growth pacing back and forth to capture these critters…..this groundwork can get wet!!! I need to aspire to the horseback position!

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We have fairly rudimentary corrals out in the pasture for this type of thing but it’s certainly a step-up from just roping a sick animal and tying her to a tree. Our old chute system from the home corrals has retired to the north pasture.

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The cows come in nice and peaceful

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But the bulls have to show up in “wrestle-mode”. Always has to be drama with these fellas .

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However
I got ’em corralled

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Our morning story.  In our pasture, almost an hour away, we rounded up and treated three cows and one calf and loaded up two rascally bulls for home all before noon.

Photo Challenge – Narrow

This week’s photo challenge ties in nicely with my little adventure yesterday. For some reason and without warning…my fancy Dodge Ram truck wouldn’t start after I returned from walking through my contented cows.

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I had dropped in at one of our pastures along the highway on my way home from the city still half an hour from home. Guess my fancy truck felt she’d give me a little attitude because she maybe thought pasture-checking was beneath her and she had just had such a fine time cruising the paved streets of the city for a few days????

Most folks might not think this trailer bed is Narrow but this gal sure did. Didn’t know I would be required to steer [no power steering when the truck won’t start] this big old girl up this “narrow” ramp while the tow truck driver winched us up. It felt like the early stages of a midway ride when you slowly crawl up to scary heights unknown because you can’t see at all where your tires are.

Turns out we got ourselves lined up mighty fine.

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Photo Challenge – Look Up

From my passenger seat in the truck whilst we were driving down the highway on our way to check pastures, I thought to Look Up and good heaven’s…thought we were under attack!

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Turns out it was somebody’s canola field under attack. Crop – dusting season. Although pretty contrasting colors and all this is what negatively impacts the bee population in our world. Another topic for another time………..

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Photo Challenge – Numbers

So fitting that this week’s photo challenge should be Numbers

Seems that’s all I’ve been dealing with this past week as we gather, sort, record, sort again, load and take our herd to their separate pastures for the summer from our home base.

We are meticulous about keeping record of every cow and where she is and what bull she will be with by recording their precious Numbers.