Tag Archives: fiction

Gentle Cattle Get Fat

Grazing Right, Handling Right series

I want to do a series of clips of what I feel is important for proper grazing of animals from a Stockmanship point of view and increasing profit potential from the animals preforming at the best rate possible because of creating animals that graze in a way that keeps the gut full and healthy, and also animals that are content in the moment in the environment and pasture they are in. 

I want to start at the end. These steers are big, fat, gentle and handle real well in the pasture or corral. I hauled them to the sale, they stepped off the trailer calm, and I watched them sell on the internet and they walked in the ring calm and didn’t get bothered at all. 

They weighed more than I thought they would, 1093 average and they brought $311!

I really hope they can stay together through the finish and get to a yard that they can have the same quality of life they have had in my care. 

When you deal with large numbers it is much less personal.  When you don’t have many and know them personally from the time they are born you can get a little attached and really care about them. 

There is nothing wrong with that at all, and maybe we need to have the same feelings with larger numbers of animals. If you have an attachment to something you sure give them better care. 

I wanted to have areal nice easy gather and sort for these big guys on the last time I got to work them. Horse worked good, cattle handled nice, that’s why I like this so much!

This clip turned out to be a nice surprise. I put the camera on a gate post and the cattle had to come into the shot.  What I didn’t realize was the camera was filming our shadows. 

We rode home after getting them sorted and brought truck and trailer back and loaded them on foot. They worked great and loaded up calm and relaxed. 

Stay tuned to see how we graze and handle cattle in our paddocks and pastures to get cattle like this that get gentle and fat. 

Ropes go on, guns go off

In the book “Trails Plowed Under” Charlie Russell spoke of cowboy danger and said the two big dangers were ropes and guns. Ropes go on, Guns go off. It’s a great book that I need to read again.

I had a little time today before lunch and decided this would be a good time to get John Grady Cole, the nice young horse I’ve been working with used to roping something, and this Yearling colt named Jonny Ringo needed roped a little so it was a good opportunity to rope two horses with one reata (kill two birds with one stone).

I was happy with my pressure and how it went. I think they were both better when I finished than when I started and it should be good next time by the way they learned.

If there was to much fear and panic in either horse at any time, even if it ends up good, it never carries through as good as keeping them on the thinking side of the brain rather than the reacting side.

I should have done some with my right hand, but it was past dinner time and I was getting hungry. I’ll get it next time.

like ol’ Charlie said, it’s easy to get in a jackpot with a rope and horses. The worst is when the animal you have roped is going one direction and the horse your riding is stopped or heading the other direction. Things get tight quick. The important thing for safety is most always “ride to the wreck” as it will keep the rope from coming tight and make things very dangerous.

At first keep a lot of forward movement and try to keep your rope of the ground to keep your horse from stepping over it. There is nothing that says you can’t throw your rope and coils at the wreck and just start over.

There gets to be lots of things to see and thing about when doing this, but it’s great learning opportunity for you, your horse and what you have rope, if it’s all done right.

Don’t throw the bucket at them!

I’ve been catching horses for a long time. When I was a kid we had lots of horses from killers to spoiled stuff. I had my pony “Pee Wee” and and we had a few saddle horses but most were trader horses to be sold. My Sister and I always got our horses in every morning to have available to ride all day. The horse pasture had a swamp in it and if the horses didn’t want to be caught it was not much fun as they would make you go through the swamp and creek and get your boots muddy. If you could get one caught then you could ride bareback with halter and get em run in, which sometimes got a little wild. Of course we had a vest and helmet.(don’t believe that)

We would take a coffee can of grain with us and wrap the halter and rope around us so they couldn’t see it. Lots of times they would let you get up to them, eat some oats and as soon as you went to the halter to get ready to catch one they would run off.

That’s when you threw the coffee can at them and went to chasing them to go across the swamp and into the corral.

Hard to catch horses are some of the most frustrating things in dealing with horses. I have come a long ways in my understanding and actually enjoy getting a sour to catch horse good.

So much of it depends on the type of pressure you put on your horse while using them. They either like to be with you or would rather be somewhere else. The latter means they might be a little on the hard to catch side.

Here’s some thoughts on how to present yourself. If I see someone that is good at catching a hard to catch horse in a way that the horse gets better instead of worse, then I a watching someone that understands stockmanship and horsemanship.