Author’s note: This blog is about a real cow – “Old Number 5” – on my family’s ranch northwest of Kaycee, Wyoming. While the cow’s “thoughts”and feelings are obviously conjecture, the day-to-day activities and movements of this cow are real. We will follow her throughout the year to all of the pastures she grazes, and she will give her “opinions” about all of them and the happenings within her herd. My family and I expend a lot of time, energy, and resources to make sure the cattle have plenty to eat, fresh, clean water to drink, and are, for lack of a better phrase, Happy Cows. Please keep in mind that my intentions for this blog are not to “humanize” cows – or any other animal – but merely to provide a look into what a typical cow here at Brock Livestock Company goes through in a given year, and her possible “opinions” about things.
Hello to everyone from wonderful Wyoming! The month of July has been a good month for everyone out here at Brock Livestock Company along the North Fork of the Powder River – for all of us cows and our little ones, and for our ranchers as well. It has been a pretty busy month – and an exciting one – for all of us, but it has been a good month. July started off with our ranchers wanting to brand our calves the first weekend of the month. However, they forgot to inform us about it, and when the time came for them to gather us up for the branding, we had already made some plans of our own! My herdmates and I all figured it was getting close to time to head for the mountain, so when we saw our ranchers show up riding their horses, we all gathered up our calves and took off for OUR destination. Well, they wanted us to go one way, we wanted to go the other, so something had to give – and it was them that gave! I’ll admit that we hardly ever win one of these “battles”, but we must have been feeling extra stubborn that evening when they were wanting to corral us, and quite a few of us just kept on marching toward the mountain. In fact, I was a little bit embarrassed when one of our ranchers recognized me and accused me of being a “ringleader”!
Like I said, we won that night, but by the next morning we were starting to feel a little more willing to cooperate, and when our ranchers showed up before first light, we all marched on into the corral. The ranchers quickly sorted us momma cows off, got right to branding, and were done working with all of our calves by mid-morning. It is usually pretty confusing for awhile as we momma cows all try to figure out whose calf is who’s, but we all had things pretty much back to normal by that evening. By that next Monday you wouldn’t have even guessed that our bunch had been branded by the way everyone was acting!
I mentioned earlier about the excitement we had here; one afternoon last week a big thunderhead rolled in over us the way they sometimes do in the summertime, and it started to rain. Well, it just kept right on raining, and raining, and raining – more rain than I had ever seen in one sitting! Water started running in from out of the hills, places I didn’t think ever ran water had streams coming down them. As you can imagine, little North Fork swelled up awfully big – bigger than I had ever seen it – and took out everything in it’s path, which out here, was pretty much just fences. We were all far enough away from the creek that we just watched it all happen (and tried to find dry places to stand), so no one got hurt from the flooding, but I am very sorry to report that one of my herdmates’ calves was hit by lightning that evening and was killed.
We have been continuing to graze through the irrigated meadows, but each time we move we are moving closer and closer to our mountain. I have to admit that I really like this new rotation they have for us of grazing through these lush irrigated meadows during the early and mid summer, and then heading to the mountain in August. It lets us stay on that nice tall, lush grass a little bit longer, and then it will also allow us to stay on the nice cool mountain later into the fall.
As for my baby calf, she can hardly be called a baby anymore (just ask her, she’ll tell you the same thing)! She is gaining more than 2 pounds every day now, and she is growing quite independent of her boring old mother! Her and her friends like to wander off and investigate the world, or sometimes they just like to race around with their tails up in the air and buck and play. Did I ever have that much energy when I was her age? She is definitely growing up, but I still keep my eye on her – more than she knows – and I pretty much know where she’s at all the time.
-Jason Williams, Brock Livestock (Jason is one of the valued partner ranchers raising cattle for Tallgrass)
