My dad talks about the days of running cattle in this country when he was a kid.
His Granddad was more of a farmer than rancher but he had quite a few cattle. Once a year his granddad would gather up his older steers and trail them to the railroad in Hardin. Dad always laughed about the way his granddad did things. He said they would trail in a bunch of steers that were mostly three year olds but there would also be some four and five year olds that had gotten away in previous years. As an aside here when dad bought the place he said that there was a half dozen huge steers that were over 8 years old that he played hell trying to get rounded up. It would take two days to trail the steers to Hardin and load them on the train. They took them to what was called the Y and load them out. They usually went to Omaha where they were put on grain for a few weeks and then slaughtered. Dad always talks about the trips into Hardin. What he really remembered was the trip back. After the steers were loaded Grandma would have the vehicle there and everybody would load up for the ride home except him. They would stick him on a horse and he got to follow the horse herd home to the ranch. He always enjoyed the trip back. He said it would only take few hours and they would be back.
My dad's dad was a little different story though. When he shipped stuff it was all two year olds. He was always right on the ball doing things right and getting them done in good order. I worked for the man once when i was younger, he was a hard man to please. Dad never talks about these trail drives much. He did say they trailed down Tullock Creek like his granddad did to the Y in Hardin sometimes but they also trailed down Reno creek to Benteen where they loaded cattle too. Same deal, they loaded these older animals up and sent them to the Midwest, Omaha, where they were fed grain for about 30 days before being slaughtered.
How times and things change, when my dad started ranching the thing was not to sell older critters like he described. Calves were what most guys sold. That allowed you to run more mother cows and have more production capability. Why did this happen? Cheap feed in the Midwest allowed them to put the gain on calves cheaper so they would feed them out in feedlots.
I really wonder with the price of corn and other feedstock like they are, are we going to see the cattle industry move back to selling older cattle? Is a cow calf producer like me going to go back to selling yearlings instead of calves? Is the industry going to be able to afford to take calves and put the expensive feed in them or are we going to have to raise them up to yearlings on grass and then put 30 days of corn in them to get them fat like my Grandpa and Great-Granddad did? This would really save on the feeding expense to get cattle fat.
These thoughts have been running around my mind the past couple of weeks. This last year, yearling prices were really strong. Is that the signal that we need to start doing things different? Should I jump now to a different way of operating or wait and see? I think the high feed prices are going to be a new norm for quite a while with the push for ethanol we see so I think it would be smart to adapt early. But is this the right move? I'll have to consider for a while. Step back to the way Granddad did things, quite a paradigm shift to think about.
Sunday, December 23. 2007
Trailing Cattle
Posted by Sarpy Sam
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Sunday, December 16. 2007
Cottonseed Cake
We started to feed some cake the other day and I got to thinking about the old cottonseed cake we used to feed. My dad always talks about its feed value, 40% protein, and how hard it was, the cows really had to slow down to eat it, but what I remember about it was how it came.
One hundred pound burlap sacks. My dad would get one to two semi loads each year. Oh, were they a nightmare to unload. Twenty five ton of feed in 100 pound burlap bags per semi. Most of the time we would get a few people together to help unload it but one time I remember me and a buddy of mine were the only people around to unload the damn thing. We were both about 16 years old. One person in the trailer and one on the ground in the feed shed carrying one bag at a time unloading it. Yes, unloading the cake is my memories of cottonseed cake, not feeding it.
My dad talks about when he bought the ranch from his dad, he found that the cake shed his granddad maintained on the place was chock full of old , rotten sacked, coon shit on, cottonseed cake. He remembers his granddad buying a bunch every year but not always feeding it all so he slowly built up quite a stash. My dad went and got himself a cake feeder since the bags were so rotten he couldn't use them, and commenced to feeding all the old cake to his cows. He says it took him over 3 years to feed up all the old cottonseed cake that granddad had stockpiled in the cake shed. Now I know he run fewer cattle back then than I do now but that had to have been a lot of cake.
Talk about how feeding has changed over the years. Cottonseed cake was real popular many years ago for cattle. Today you don't see it very much around here. Why not? transportation costs. You can't afford to get it shipped up here anymore, the transportation costs would kill you. You can buy a locally produced grain based cake a lot cheaper. That is until now. This year I still got a locally produced cake but guess what was in it. Distillers grain from ethanol. Years ago the byproduct we fed was cottonseed and now we have a new byproduct, distillers grain. Ain't progress interesting?
One hundred pound burlap sacks. My dad would get one to two semi loads each year. Oh, were they a nightmare to unload. Twenty five ton of feed in 100 pound burlap bags per semi. Most of the time we would get a few people together to help unload it but one time I remember me and a buddy of mine were the only people around to unload the damn thing. We were both about 16 years old. One person in the trailer and one on the ground in the feed shed carrying one bag at a time unloading it. Yes, unloading the cake is my memories of cottonseed cake, not feeding it.
My dad talks about when he bought the ranch from his dad, he found that the cake shed his granddad maintained on the place was chock full of old , rotten sacked, coon shit on, cottonseed cake. He remembers his granddad buying a bunch every year but not always feeding it all so he slowly built up quite a stash. My dad went and got himself a cake feeder since the bags were so rotten he couldn't use them, and commenced to feeding all the old cake to his cows. He says it took him over 3 years to feed up all the old cottonseed cake that granddad had stockpiled in the cake shed. Now I know he run fewer cattle back then than I do now but that had to have been a lot of cake.
Talk about how feeding has changed over the years. Cottonseed cake was real popular many years ago for cattle. Today you don't see it very much around here. Why not? transportation costs. You can't afford to get it shipped up here anymore, the transportation costs would kill you. You can buy a locally produced grain based cake a lot cheaper. That is until now. This year I still got a locally produced cake but guess what was in it. Distillers grain from ethanol. Years ago the byproduct we fed was cottonseed and now we have a new byproduct, distillers grain. Ain't progress interesting?
Sunday, September 16. 2007
Pick It Up
I met some family today in Billings and went out for lunch with them. We try to get together for "special events" and with my oldest daughter's and my birthday coming up this week, that qualified. While I was paying the bill for our meal I remembered a really bad habit I had for a few years as a kid.
I was around 10 years old and I noticed that when we ate out my parents always left a little money on the table. Then they went and paid for the meal so I knew it wasn't for the meal but I wasn't sure what it was for. I was really bad when I was younger about not asking questions about things like this. I tried to figure them out myself. This one confused me. I studied it and studied it and couldn't figure out why they were leaving the money on the table. Finally I decided to watch and see what happened to the money.
As we were leaving one day I told my folks I had to use the bathroom as they left. I hid around the corner from where we sat and watched until I saw that the waitress pocketed the money. Oh this confused me. I checked it out a few more times and sure enough, the waitress picked up the money every time. What right did she have to it? I wasn't sure why it was there but that didn't seem right.
I thought about this for awhile and finally came to the conclusion somehow that i needed the money worse than the waitress so I started picking it up. I must have known that it was wrong because I always contrived to be the last one leaving the table and as I left I would pick the money up. I know now how bad what I was doing was but I didn't realize it at the time.
I continued this practice for quite a few years and got a fair sum of money before I finally understood what I was doing was wrong. I still am a little ashamed of the whole thing but what can I do about it?
Leaving the tip today reminded me of all of this. Damn that was a lot of moons ago but the memory is still clear about doing this.
A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day. Anna Mary Robertson Moses
I was around 10 years old and I noticed that when we ate out my parents always left a little money on the table. Then they went and paid for the meal so I knew it wasn't for the meal but I wasn't sure what it was for. I was really bad when I was younger about not asking questions about things like this. I tried to figure them out myself. This one confused me. I studied it and studied it and couldn't figure out why they were leaving the money on the table. Finally I decided to watch and see what happened to the money.
As we were leaving one day I told my folks I had to use the bathroom as they left. I hid around the corner from where we sat and watched until I saw that the waitress pocketed the money. Oh this confused me. I checked it out a few more times and sure enough, the waitress picked up the money every time. What right did she have to it? I wasn't sure why it was there but that didn't seem right.
I thought about this for awhile and finally came to the conclusion somehow that i needed the money worse than the waitress so I started picking it up. I must have known that it was wrong because I always contrived to be the last one leaving the table and as I left I would pick the money up. I know now how bad what I was doing was but I didn't realize it at the time.
I continued this practice for quite a few years and got a fair sum of money before I finally understood what I was doing was wrong. I still am a little ashamed of the whole thing but what can I do about it?
Leaving the tip today reminded me of all of this. Damn that was a lot of moons ago but the memory is still clear about doing this.
A strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, and the other forward; one is of today, the other of tomorrow. Memory is history recorded in our brain, memory is a painter, it paints pictures of the past and of the day. Anna Mary Robertson Moses
Sunday, September 9. 2007
Injuries
One of the interesting things about living in the middle of nowhere is the sudden trips to town to the emergency room. I have two stories to tell in this regard.
The first story involves my Dad. I was just a kid in school at the time this happened. First a little ground work. We lived in town during the school year because there was no bus out here at the time and there was no phone service. Between that and my parents being divorced, my dad was alone out here and he had no hired man. That's the ground work for the story.
It was in the fall and he went out to do some riding. The horses and everything is about 5 miles away from the house so he took off to do his riding. He saddled his horse, Custer I believe, and took off. He was about 2 miles away from the corral when something happened. To this day nobody, including dad, knows what happened. All he remembers is coming to, laying on the ground in extreme pain.
His right side hurt like hell and he was having a hard time breathing. He lay there for a little bit recovering and decided he had to do something. It could be a couple of weeks before anybody missed him so there was no help forthcoming. Either he helped himself or he died. So he managed to get himself to his feet and started walking to the pickup about 2 miles away. Now I'm telling this from the stories he told me. He never talked about the walk very much but he did say that he wanted to sit down and rest so bad it wasn't even funny but he was afraid with the pain he would never manage to get up again. How long it took him to walk the distance he doesn't remember but it felt like a lifetime to him.
He finally made it to the pickup and it took him quite q while to get in. The pain in his right side and his inability to use his right arm all but made it impossible to crawl in to the pickup. He finally got in and got the pickup started but had a real hard time getting it in gear to get it going. He finally managed to reach across with his left hand and slip the pickup into granny low and start traveling. Oh, he said it hurt.
There were 5 gates, and 5 miles, between him and the help. As he was coming to the first gate he knew there was no way that he could get out and do anything about the gate so he said he aimed the pickup at the gate stick hoping to break it and knock the gate down so that he wouldn't get it tangled in the drive. He eased all the way to the neighbors house and as he got there at the last gate the neighbors hired man was on the combine cutting alfalfa seed. Dad was very glad to see him. He stopped the pickup and waved at the guy trying to get him to come over to the pickup. The guy just waved at dad and kept cutting the seed. It was a real small patch of seed and dad kept waving and signaling and honking the horn trying to get him to come over. The guy kept waving and working along. Dad finally started the pickup up and through all the pain managed to get it started again and drove the pickup into the gate, breaking it, and finally got the guy to stop and come over.
Well needless to say the guy finally figured out the problem and helped dad. He got him scooted over and drove him to town to the hospital. Dad had somehow broken his right shoulder blade and collar bone and all his ribs on the right side. He also had a punctured lung which wasn't helping anything out. He managed to pull through but it was nip and tuck for a little while until they manged to get his lung re inflated and working. How he managed the walk with his right side caved in and punctured lung is beyond me but knowing that no help was forthcoming, he managed. I always wondered about this guy who couldn't get the hint that dad needed help. With all the signaling and waving didn't he get the hint that dad needed help? Now that I have met the man, I more understand. He is my present hired hand. A really good guy but a little thick once in a while.
The other sudden emergency trip to town involved me. I'm not sure how young I was but around ten would be my guess. My dad was taking his brother in laws hunting and I was riding along in the pickup. My one Uncle and I were riding in the back and my Uncle stood up in back and was leaning on the cab watching where we were going. Me being the big guy decided to do the same thing. We were going along when we come up to a fork in the road and I expected dad to keep going straight. He didn't. He turned to the right and guess what happened to me? I went over the edge of the pickup out.
To this day I can still see the scene in my mind. I lead the fall with the hardest part of my anatomy, my head, and I can still see the dry brown grass and ground rushing to my head until I hit. That's the last thing I remember for a little while. The next memory I have is seeing my dad running into the house for some reason. Oh was I in pain. My head felt like it was going to fall off. Real shortly he run back out of the house back towards the truck and I lost my memory at that point, passed out again. I remember coming to again near Custer's Battlefield and wondering why we were going to town, feeling the pain, and then I was out again.
I know, not much of a story because I was passed out most of the time but I remember later asking my dad why he ran into the house. He said he needed to unplug the coffee pot. That always struck me as funny. I had a pretty bad concussion and they kept me in the hospital overnight for observation. It took me I fell out in front of the back tires and I've been told there was black tire marks across my forehead where the tire grazed my head. It was a near thing that's for sure.
There have been many more injuries and trips but those are the ones that stick in my mind. Even today with the phones, most of the time it's easier to load the injured up and haul them to town. It always makes for interesting conversations. That's life in the Middle of Nowhere for you.
The first story involves my Dad. I was just a kid in school at the time this happened. First a little ground work. We lived in town during the school year because there was no bus out here at the time and there was no phone service. Between that and my parents being divorced, my dad was alone out here and he had no hired man. That's the ground work for the story.
It was in the fall and he went out to do some riding. The horses and everything is about 5 miles away from the house so he took off to do his riding. He saddled his horse, Custer I believe, and took off. He was about 2 miles away from the corral when something happened. To this day nobody, including dad, knows what happened. All he remembers is coming to, laying on the ground in extreme pain.
His right side hurt like hell and he was having a hard time breathing. He lay there for a little bit recovering and decided he had to do something. It could be a couple of weeks before anybody missed him so there was no help forthcoming. Either he helped himself or he died. So he managed to get himself to his feet and started walking to the pickup about 2 miles away. Now I'm telling this from the stories he told me. He never talked about the walk very much but he did say that he wanted to sit down and rest so bad it wasn't even funny but he was afraid with the pain he would never manage to get up again. How long it took him to walk the distance he doesn't remember but it felt like a lifetime to him.
He finally made it to the pickup and it took him quite q while to get in. The pain in his right side and his inability to use his right arm all but made it impossible to crawl in to the pickup. He finally got in and got the pickup started but had a real hard time getting it in gear to get it going. He finally managed to reach across with his left hand and slip the pickup into granny low and start traveling. Oh, he said it hurt.
There were 5 gates, and 5 miles, between him and the help. As he was coming to the first gate he knew there was no way that he could get out and do anything about the gate so he said he aimed the pickup at the gate stick hoping to break it and knock the gate down so that he wouldn't get it tangled in the drive. He eased all the way to the neighbors house and as he got there at the last gate the neighbors hired man was on the combine cutting alfalfa seed. Dad was very glad to see him. He stopped the pickup and waved at the guy trying to get him to come over to the pickup. The guy just waved at dad and kept cutting the seed. It was a real small patch of seed and dad kept waving and signaling and honking the horn trying to get him to come over. The guy kept waving and working along. Dad finally started the pickup up and through all the pain managed to get it started again and drove the pickup into the gate, breaking it, and finally got the guy to stop and come over.
Well needless to say the guy finally figured out the problem and helped dad. He got him scooted over and drove him to town to the hospital. Dad had somehow broken his right shoulder blade and collar bone and all his ribs on the right side. He also had a punctured lung which wasn't helping anything out. He managed to pull through but it was nip and tuck for a little while until they manged to get his lung re inflated and working. How he managed the walk with his right side caved in and punctured lung is beyond me but knowing that no help was forthcoming, he managed. I always wondered about this guy who couldn't get the hint that dad needed help. With all the signaling and waving didn't he get the hint that dad needed help? Now that I have met the man, I more understand. He is my present hired hand. A really good guy but a little thick once in a while.
The other sudden emergency trip to town involved me. I'm not sure how young I was but around ten would be my guess. My dad was taking his brother in laws hunting and I was riding along in the pickup. My one Uncle and I were riding in the back and my Uncle stood up in back and was leaning on the cab watching where we were going. Me being the big guy decided to do the same thing. We were going along when we come up to a fork in the road and I expected dad to keep going straight. He didn't. He turned to the right and guess what happened to me? I went over the edge of the pickup out.
To this day I can still see the scene in my mind. I lead the fall with the hardest part of my anatomy, my head, and I can still see the dry brown grass and ground rushing to my head until I hit. That's the last thing I remember for a little while. The next memory I have is seeing my dad running into the house for some reason. Oh was I in pain. My head felt like it was going to fall off. Real shortly he run back out of the house back towards the truck and I lost my memory at that point, passed out again. I remember coming to again near Custer's Battlefield and wondering why we were going to town, feeling the pain, and then I was out again.
I know, not much of a story because I was passed out most of the time but I remember later asking my dad why he ran into the house. He said he needed to unplug the coffee pot. That always struck me as funny. I had a pretty bad concussion and they kept me in the hospital overnight for observation. It took me I fell out in front of the back tires and I've been told there was black tire marks across my forehead where the tire grazed my head. It was a near thing that's for sure.
There have been many more injuries and trips but those are the ones that stick in my mind. Even today with the phones, most of the time it's easier to load the injured up and haul them to town. It always makes for interesting conversations. That's life in the Middle of Nowhere for you.
Posted by Sarpy Sam
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Sunday, August 26. 2007
Strange Breeding
I brought up the fact that there is some dairy blood in my cow herd and it seemed to take quite a few people by surprise so I thought I would talk about it a little. Like I said my dad decided to try and breed some milk production into his Angus cows and used Brown Swiss bulls to do it. Whether it worked or not is debatable but I think it was an experiment that worked.
In the very late 60's my dad decided he had enough of the Hereford cattle he was using and decided to start moving to the Angus breed. He thought that there size was too small and they did not produce enough milk so he decided to cross breed some dairy into the Angus to try to increase the size and milk production into them. Now there are a lot of people out there that think my dad is not a very smart person. Barely passed high school, no advanced education of any kind, just proves to them he is not smart. To me this whole scheme shows his native intelligence that the school system was never able to elect from him. He studied which breed of dairy he wanted and decided on Brown Swiss because they have a higher butterfat content in their milk than most breeds, this is what he told me, and he figured the fat concentration would help grow larger calves.
To implement this strategy my dad went back east to Michigan or Wisconsin to get his dairy cattle. He found a whole Brown Swiss dairy herd a guy was selling and bought the whole thing, around 30 cows and 3 bulls, and brought them back to the ranch in Montana. This sure looked weird, having these dairy cows around the place, but that was the plan and dad set about making it work.
My Memories of these Dairy cows. Size!! The cows were quite a bit bigger than the beef cows around here at the time but the Bulls he bred from these cows, they were Monsters. Dad always called these Swiss bulls Ferdinand. When fully grown they were larger than any horse on the place and they were mean. The cows and bulls both were mean deep down in their bones and were very hard to work with. They did not do one thing that they didn't want to do and they weren't afraid of a human in the slightest. That made them very dangerous to be around, both their size and disposition.
This didn't make them smart though. They were about the dumbest critters around. No concept of the hazards of living on thier own or taking care of a calf. I remember you really had to watch them when they calved. They would just get up and walk away from their calf after it was born if you weren't right there to keep track of it for them. For the first couple of months of the calves life the cows had to be kept in a very small pasture or they would lose track of their calves. If they lost track of them they walked away and would never look for them again. The calves were so stupid you had to teach them how to nurse. They didn't have enough smarts to stand up and do it themselves for a while. They had to be helped. A coyote? They had no concept and didn't care. In a lot of ways though, can you blame the dairy cows for this behavior with the calves. Dairy cows usually have their calves pulled from them shortly after birth and mothering instinct is not stressed by producers. This made things really hard on my dad as a cowman who wanted the cows to take care of there own calves but he kept on for his idea.
After getting his Swiss bulls and was breeding more Swiss bulls he got some Angus cows to start his experiment. He still ran Hereford cows for quite a few years and just ran around 100 Angus cows and bred them to his Swiss bulls and then kept Replacements from them to breed the swiss down to about 1/4 for his idea. He kept this up for quite a few years until one year a late spring snow storm, May, caused a very large number of sun burned bag in the remaining Hereford cows and he sold every last one of them that fall and bought some more Angus cows to make up the difference and we have had an Angus base ever since. He kept breeding some of the Angus cows to the Swiss bulls to keep adding replacements to the herd and all the things he was working for worked like a champ.
The cows size came up, calf weights came up and it appeared the cows milk was up. Downside to this experiment though. Some extra color in the calves, and disposition. The Angus carried their maternal instincts through very well but they picked up the mean dispositions of the Swiss with a passion. The other downside was the buyers didn't like the idea of dairy in the beef cows. To this days the buyers hate it if a guy has some dairy in his beef cows. It's really looked down upon.
Don't get me wrong, any guy who ended up buying the calves turned out to like them and how they performed but getting past the idea of the Swiss in them was too much for some of them. I took some of these crosses as fat animals in 4H. I never did very well when judged because I would tell the judge about the Swiss ancestry when asked so that immediately got them downgraded but you should have seen how I did when they slaughtered them and judged them solely on the carcass quality. If mine didn't get first it was in the top fivwe every time. They did yield out well, grow good and do good for my dad and the feeders. They just didn't like the idea of what they were.
My dad finally got tired of fighting the buyers over the Swiss in the calves and got rid of the Swiss cows and bulls and let the Swiss component breed itself out of the herd. It's still there as the picture shows but you don't see it like you used to. I think the breeding helped get the herd where it is today. Good cattle that do well on grass or on feed.
In the very late 60's my dad decided he had enough of the Hereford cattle he was using and decided to start moving to the Angus breed. He thought that there size was too small and they did not produce enough milk so he decided to cross breed some dairy into the Angus to try to increase the size and milk production into them. Now there are a lot of people out there that think my dad is not a very smart person. Barely passed high school, no advanced education of any kind, just proves to them he is not smart. To me this whole scheme shows his native intelligence that the school system was never able to elect from him. He studied which breed of dairy he wanted and decided on Brown Swiss because they have a higher butterfat content in their milk than most breeds, this is what he told me, and he figured the fat concentration would help grow larger calves.
To implement this strategy my dad went back east to Michigan or Wisconsin to get his dairy cattle. He found a whole Brown Swiss dairy herd a guy was selling and bought the whole thing, around 30 cows and 3 bulls, and brought them back to the ranch in Montana. This sure looked weird, having these dairy cows around the place, but that was the plan and dad set about making it work.
My Memories of these Dairy cows. Size!! The cows were quite a bit bigger than the beef cows around here at the time but the Bulls he bred from these cows, they were Monsters. Dad always called these Swiss bulls Ferdinand. When fully grown they were larger than any horse on the place and they were mean. The cows and bulls both were mean deep down in their bones and were very hard to work with. They did not do one thing that they didn't want to do and they weren't afraid of a human in the slightest. That made them very dangerous to be around, both their size and disposition.
This didn't make them smart though. They were about the dumbest critters around. No concept of the hazards of living on thier own or taking care of a calf. I remember you really had to watch them when they calved. They would just get up and walk away from their calf after it was born if you weren't right there to keep track of it for them. For the first couple of months of the calves life the cows had to be kept in a very small pasture or they would lose track of their calves. If they lost track of them they walked away and would never look for them again. The calves were so stupid you had to teach them how to nurse. They didn't have enough smarts to stand up and do it themselves for a while. They had to be helped. A coyote? They had no concept and didn't care. In a lot of ways though, can you blame the dairy cows for this behavior with the calves. Dairy cows usually have their calves pulled from them shortly after birth and mothering instinct is not stressed by producers. This made things really hard on my dad as a cowman who wanted the cows to take care of there own calves but he kept on for his idea.
After getting his Swiss bulls and was breeding more Swiss bulls he got some Angus cows to start his experiment. He still ran Hereford cows for quite a few years and just ran around 100 Angus cows and bred them to his Swiss bulls and then kept Replacements from them to breed the swiss down to about 1/4 for his idea. He kept this up for quite a few years until one year a late spring snow storm, May, caused a very large number of sun burned bag in the remaining Hereford cows and he sold every last one of them that fall and bought some more Angus cows to make up the difference and we have had an Angus base ever since. He kept breeding some of the Angus cows to the Swiss bulls to keep adding replacements to the herd and all the things he was working for worked like a champ.
The cows size came up, calf weights came up and it appeared the cows milk was up. Downside to this experiment though. Some extra color in the calves, and disposition. The Angus carried their maternal instincts through very well but they picked up the mean dispositions of the Swiss with a passion. The other downside was the buyers didn't like the idea of dairy in the beef cows. To this days the buyers hate it if a guy has some dairy in his beef cows. It's really looked down upon.
Don't get me wrong, any guy who ended up buying the calves turned out to like them and how they performed but getting past the idea of the Swiss in them was too much for some of them. I took some of these crosses as fat animals in 4H. I never did very well when judged because I would tell the judge about the Swiss ancestry when asked so that immediately got them downgraded but you should have seen how I did when they slaughtered them and judged them solely on the carcass quality. If mine didn't get first it was in the top fivwe every time. They did yield out well, grow good and do good for my dad and the feeders. They just didn't like the idea of what they were.
My dad finally got tired of fighting the buyers over the Swiss in the calves and got rid of the Swiss cows and bulls and let the Swiss component breed itself out of the herd. It's still there as the picture shows but you don't see it like you used to. I think the breeding helped get the herd where it is today. Good cattle that do well on grass or on feed.
Sunday, July 29. 2007
Saddle
I remember my first new saddle I ever had. Yes, I have a saddle story. Most guys my age have car stories but that's not me, I have a saddle story.
My dad bought my sister and I brand new, never before used saddles for Christmas in 1971. Oh were we proud of those saddles. They were shiny and new, with padded seats and we really were in love with them. My sister kept hers in the house to keep it clean, if I remember right, but I wanted mine out in the barn where the working men kept their saddles.
Now you have to remember, I was in school at this time and there was no bus service to the ranch area so you had to move to town to go to school, no choice. I lived in town with mom during the school year so I didn't spend much time at the ranch so I didn't get much of a chance to use my new saddle. Now I am sure I used my saddle a few times by the time of our branding that year but I don't remember for sure.
What I do remember is our branding. June 1972. At this time my dad was branding the cattle in two bunches. The one big bunch we did in the morning and after dinner we went up and rode on the mountain and gathered the ones there and branded them. This is the bunch that he was breeding special to build his herd and are the ancestors of the cows I am running on the ranch today. We gathered this bunch and got them in the corral when along came a dark old cloud and started pouring rain on us.
There was only a couple of vehicles there to get out of the rain so most of us crawled under the two ton truck and sat there to get out of the rain. It was really raining out now. Like a cow pissin on a flat rock is how you would describe the kind of rain around here. Within a couple of minutes we couldn't sit under the truck as there was water coming in. Now this was on a flat spot, as flat as it gets around here, and the water was building up under the truck it was pouring so hard. I can remember squatting under this truck, water to my ankles, looking out at my saddle worrying about it getting wet. Not my horse getting wet, me getting wet or anybody else, just my saddle getting soaked and I had barely rode it yet.
It quit raining after about 30 minutes. There was water standing all over the place and it was slick and muddy. We had to not brand that bunch as it was too wet but I remember this storm for two reasons. One, my poor saddle got soaked and I had to ride the wet thing home and the second thing was the Rapid City flood. The storm system that dumped so much water on us was the same storm system that caused the dam to break near Rapid City and cause such devastation.
The saddle didn't get hurt with the water, just the other things involved with it cause me to remember the situation. Used the saddle the rest of the summer no problem and then school started again. Trek to town to live there and again, not much contact with the ranch. One day before shipping, Dad comes in with some real bad news. The barn burnt down. To this day we are not sure how it happened but the barn burnt down and nothing was left. This included the shop and all the tools, calving and farrowing facilities, my dad was raising hogs then, and the tack room and all the saddles and horse equipment. Yes, I hadn't even had my saddle for a year and now it was gone. I was heart broken.
The only saddle that survived this incident was, you guessed it, my sisters new saddle since she kept it in the house. Did she have a premonition or what? My Dad commenced to using my sisters saddle while he was getting a new one. He ordered one from a saddle maker in Sheridan and it took a few months to get. I eventually got an old used saddle to use as my dad replaced the tack equipment that was destroyed. After I got out of the Navy, I got me another new saddle custom built and so I finally got another new saddle. The used replacement saddle I used for so many years My oldest now rides and my youngest girl rides my sisters saddle that is still hanging around here in good shape. Someday my sister will probably want it back but at the moment she doesn't have much use for it so my girl gets to use it.
One coincidental thing about my dads new saddle from this incident. When the maker had finished building it down in Sheridan, he spotted a guy working for a neighbor here and gave it to him to deliver to my Dad. This guy happened to be in Sheridan and the maker knew it would get to my dad sooner this way so sent it with him. This guy, who worked for a neighbor, is my hired hand today. He vividly remembers bringing the saddle to dad. Kind of a small world isn't it. I know, not much of a story overall today but that's what I have.
My dad bought my sister and I brand new, never before used saddles for Christmas in 1971. Oh were we proud of those saddles. They were shiny and new, with padded seats and we really were in love with them. My sister kept hers in the house to keep it clean, if I remember right, but I wanted mine out in the barn where the working men kept their saddles.
Now you have to remember, I was in school at this time and there was no bus service to the ranch area so you had to move to town to go to school, no choice. I lived in town with mom during the school year so I didn't spend much time at the ranch so I didn't get much of a chance to use my new saddle. Now I am sure I used my saddle a few times by the time of our branding that year but I don't remember for sure.
What I do remember is our branding. June 1972. At this time my dad was branding the cattle in two bunches. The one big bunch we did in the morning and after dinner we went up and rode on the mountain and gathered the ones there and branded them. This is the bunch that he was breeding special to build his herd and are the ancestors of the cows I am running on the ranch today. We gathered this bunch and got them in the corral when along came a dark old cloud and started pouring rain on us.
There was only a couple of vehicles there to get out of the rain so most of us crawled under the two ton truck and sat there to get out of the rain. It was really raining out now. Like a cow pissin on a flat rock is how you would describe the kind of rain around here. Within a couple of minutes we couldn't sit under the truck as there was water coming in. Now this was on a flat spot, as flat as it gets around here, and the water was building up under the truck it was pouring so hard. I can remember squatting under this truck, water to my ankles, looking out at my saddle worrying about it getting wet. Not my horse getting wet, me getting wet or anybody else, just my saddle getting soaked and I had barely rode it yet.
It quit raining after about 30 minutes. There was water standing all over the place and it was slick and muddy. We had to not brand that bunch as it was too wet but I remember this storm for two reasons. One, my poor saddle got soaked and I had to ride the wet thing home and the second thing was the Rapid City flood. The storm system that dumped so much water on us was the same storm system that caused the dam to break near Rapid City and cause such devastation.
The saddle didn't get hurt with the water, just the other things involved with it cause me to remember the situation. Used the saddle the rest of the summer no problem and then school started again. Trek to town to live there and again, not much contact with the ranch. One day before shipping, Dad comes in with some real bad news. The barn burnt down. To this day we are not sure how it happened but the barn burnt down and nothing was left. This included the shop and all the tools, calving and farrowing facilities, my dad was raising hogs then, and the tack room and all the saddles and horse equipment. Yes, I hadn't even had my saddle for a year and now it was gone. I was heart broken.
The only saddle that survived this incident was, you guessed it, my sisters new saddle since she kept it in the house. Did she have a premonition or what? My Dad commenced to using my sisters saddle while he was getting a new one. He ordered one from a saddle maker in Sheridan and it took a few months to get. I eventually got an old used saddle to use as my dad replaced the tack equipment that was destroyed. After I got out of the Navy, I got me another new saddle custom built and so I finally got another new saddle. The used replacement saddle I used for so many years My oldest now rides and my youngest girl rides my sisters saddle that is still hanging around here in good shape. Someday my sister will probably want it back but at the moment she doesn't have much use for it so my girl gets to use it.
One coincidental thing about my dads new saddle from this incident. When the maker had finished building it down in Sheridan, he spotted a guy working for a neighbor here and gave it to him to deliver to my Dad. This guy happened to be in Sheridan and the maker knew it would get to my dad sooner this way so sent it with him. This guy, who worked for a neighbor, is my hired hand today. He vividly remembers bringing the saddle to dad. Kind of a small world isn't it. I know, not much of a story overall today but that's what I have.
Sunday, July 22. 2007
Guard
My Mom's brother, my Uncle, always told two stories that always struck my interest about his grandpa. The way I understand it, these quick stories are about his mother's father but I could be wrong there. A quick bit of history, my mother's side of my family is all Russian-Germans. I was always under the impression, because that's what I was told, that Russian-Germans were peasants that got unwillingly transported to Russia when Catherine the Great moved there. A quick look here shows that this story isn't true. Catherine the Great was instrumental in opening Russia up to German Immigrants, they weren't forced to go there. It appears the wars in Central Europe and religious oppression drove them out of Germany towards Russia just as it drove other Germans to America. This was an interesting find in and of itself for me. On to the story.
One time when he was young, my uncle and some of his friends were out by the garage at his house and they were comparing firearms and my uncle was showing his rifle when his grandpa came up and asked to look at the gun. This surprised my uncle since as far as he knew his grandpa had no interest in guns and did not own a gun so he couldn't figure out why he wanted it but handed it to him. His grandpa then checked that the rifle was unloaded and commenced to twirl the gun around like you see the soldiers do in the movies in close order drill. My uncle was struck dumb by this display since he had no idea his grandpa knew how to do this. When grandpa was done with his exhibition, my uncle asked him how he knew to do that. He responded that before he had left Russia he had been in the Czar's personal guard and they were always doing that. He wasn't sure if he still remembered how but he saw now that he did.
This story always fascinated me. I'm not sure when my great grandpa on this side came to this country but it was early in the 1900's so he just missed the Russian Revolution. That he was in the Czar's Guard was simply amazing. I wonder when it was and where he was? I'll probably never know.
The second story my uncle told happened quite a few years later. Grandpa was visiting and they were sitting there watching the TV when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. My uncle said he looked over and his grandpa had a tear coming out of his eye. My uncle asked what was wrong. Grandpa said that the advancement he had seen in his lifetime was amazing. When he left Russia they had a cart for their possessions and went by foot. Then I saw trains, cars and airplanes all developed and now a man sets foot on the moon. Then he said, "I don't think anyone will ever see the human race make as much progress as I have managed to see in my lifetime."
This story always struck me too. Think about it, how far the human race went in that time frame. From horsepower to landing on the moon in his lifetime. Quite something. Are we as a society making the same kinds of progress today? Maybe not in personal transport but in computers, information technology, medical science and other areas I think we are. It just isn't as obvious as it was to my great-grandpa with his seeing the revolutions in human transportation. Seeing the changes in a persons lifetime is interesting sometimes when you sit back and consider it. Have you?
One time when he was young, my uncle and some of his friends were out by the garage at his house and they were comparing firearms and my uncle was showing his rifle when his grandpa came up and asked to look at the gun. This surprised my uncle since as far as he knew his grandpa had no interest in guns and did not own a gun so he couldn't figure out why he wanted it but handed it to him. His grandpa then checked that the rifle was unloaded and commenced to twirl the gun around like you see the soldiers do in the movies in close order drill. My uncle was struck dumb by this display since he had no idea his grandpa knew how to do this. When grandpa was done with his exhibition, my uncle asked him how he knew to do that. He responded that before he had left Russia he had been in the Czar's personal guard and they were always doing that. He wasn't sure if he still remembered how but he saw now that he did.
This story always fascinated me. I'm not sure when my great grandpa on this side came to this country but it was early in the 1900's so he just missed the Russian Revolution. That he was in the Czar's Guard was simply amazing. I wonder when it was and where he was? I'll probably never know.
The second story my uncle told happened quite a few years later. Grandpa was visiting and they were sitting there watching the TV when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. My uncle said he looked over and his grandpa had a tear coming out of his eye. My uncle asked what was wrong. Grandpa said that the advancement he had seen in his lifetime was amazing. When he left Russia they had a cart for their possessions and went by foot. Then I saw trains, cars and airplanes all developed and now a man sets foot on the moon. Then he said, "I don't think anyone will ever see the human race make as much progress as I have managed to see in my lifetime."
This story always struck me too. Think about it, how far the human race went in that time frame. From horsepower to landing on the moon in his lifetime. Quite something. Are we as a society making the same kinds of progress today? Maybe not in personal transport but in computers, information technology, medical science and other areas I think we are. It just isn't as obvious as it was to my great-grandpa with his seeing the revolutions in human transportation. Seeing the changes in a persons lifetime is interesting sometimes when you sit back and consider it. Have you?
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