So it’s been a while since I’ve made a post. We’ve been busy calving since the end of February. Mother Nature has been fairly uncooperative, making a busy time of year way more work than necessary.
The beginning of March brought bitterly cold temperatures, snow and lots of work looking after first time mothers. Many long nights spent checking expectant first calf heifers. In the middle of March we were lucky enough to have a few nice days, they turned out to just be teasers, meant for us to think spring was actually here. Our cows were due to start calving the last week in March. It doesn’t seem to matter what day we pick to trail cows home, the weather never seems to cooperate. So when we picked the day this year the weather report 10 days out called for a beautiful day, we thought we had smooth sailing. Mother Nature, fickle as she is this year, hand changed her mind…AGAIN! We trailed them home in snow showers and winds gusting up to 40 mph.
By the time the cows due date rolled around, we had 50 pairs kicked out, and the weather was looking gorgeous. Then Mother Nature must have been dumped by her boyfriend, she got her panties all in a bunch and sent a good old spring storm, dumping 8-10 inches of heavy wet snow on the calving grounds and everywhere else. With most Spring Storms, the snow doesn’t last long. The sun usually comes out to play, warms the ground and turns all the white into sticky brown mud! Not so quick, this must have been one big bad SOB that Mother Nature needed to teach a lesson to. No warm sun on day 2, instead we woke up to -1.8 degrees on the first day of April, followed by yet another snow storm dumping even more snow. By now, like most every farmer and rancher in Western South Dakota, we are smack dab in the middle of calving.
So this is where the real story begins. Now that I’ve given the background story, picture not sleeping on a regular schedule for over a month, and now for the past 4 days you’ve been up anywhere from 18-20 hours a day. Besides the fact that 12 inches of snow everywhere makes things difficult in the day time, it makes things 10 times more fun in the dark.
10 o’clock rolled around time to take our first check of the night. We bundle up and head out to the ranger. My job: run the spotlight. No ranch wife has ever shined the spotlight at the exact spot the rancher wanted her to at the exact time he thought she should. That was my first mistake of the night. So that along with sleep deprivation increases tension in the ranger. We drive through and find a couple cows that have calved safe and sound next to the stockade on the bedding we had laid out that night for them. They were mothering their babies, and all seemed in order. Next we found a cow who had calved in the middle of some other cows right in the snow. Another cow who was calving was trying to granny this other cow’s baby. We could see this cow had big feet showing, we were going to finish our round around the lot. Hopefully this cow would go lie down and have her calf, and give the other a minute to bond with her calf before we had to move it.
Down in the bottom of the lot in the deep snow we find Horny cow. Yes that’s her name because she has tiny little stub horns. She’s had her calf and is laying 5 feet away from it as it shivers in the snow. Horny received her name for her horns, not because she’s a pet by any means. Horny is a little bit of a flighty cow, so we throw out the calf sled, and get her baby loaded up. I climb in the back of the ranger and keep eye on the calf in the sled, and try to keep her following the sled by bellowing back at her when she calls for her calf. We’re doing well, we haven’t gotten stuck or tipped the calf out of the sled, and the cow is following along. The husband heads up the hill out of the bottom of the creek and spins out, and Horny Cow takes off in the dark. We both know getting her in in the dark will be nearly impossible, so we haul her chilled down baby to the shed, and throw him in the hot box to defrost. We decide they will have to wait until daylight to be reunited.
Trip two, we find the cow that was calving with the big toes. She has wondered off and found a place to lie down and work at it. So we leave her to be, and load up the calf born in the snow. We decide to see if we can get this one to follow us in too. She is a little older cow, and this time it works. I sit in the back of the ranger, and hold the strings to the sled trying to keep it from falling in the ranger tracks and tipping out the calf. We are able to get this calf and her momma all the way in from the lot to the shed where they are snug and warm.
We head back out to the lot again, old big toes hasn’t calved yet. The husband says “I think we’re going to have to pull it.” Not words I wanted to hear! Our options include trying to pull it out in the lot, or try to run her into the shed in the dark. I can handle trying to get a cow to follow us in with the sled in the dark, that’s worked on more than one occasion. Trying to chase a cow in in the dark, never usually ends well, and then add a foot of snow that you can’t get around in with anything but a horse or snowmobile unless you are in a pre-established track. So, I suggest we go check heifers, and if she hasn’t calved by the time we get back we decide what to do from there.
We get to the heifers to discover one of them has calved, so we get it drug to the shed and all settled in. I think by know Old Big Toes has had to have calved out by now. So back out we go…no luck chuck! So the husband says, “Let’s get the puller.” As we head back out, he thinks we are going to get this done out in the lot. I looked at him and said, “I want to go on record right now saying I think this is a really bad idea.” We have 3 options, try to do it here in the lot, try to run her into the shed, or calf dies because we aren’t able to get it out in time. We make our way out find her, and after some thought he gives up on the idea of pulling it in the lot and goes to get a 4 wheeler. We are going to try to get her in. At this point I’m thankful I’m inside the cab of the ranger with windows shut I can’t hear the obscenities being yelled at me as she runs between the 4 wheeler and the front of the ranger hooking the grill guard on the ranger as she goes by. We manage to get her turned around and headed in the right direction, until I can’t see her anymore, and I can’t make it up the hill on the ranger, but from beside me I can see the husband pointing and waiving from the top of the 4 wheeler. I am apprehensive to open the door and crawl out, I not only am going to have to try to run this cow in on foot, with nothing but a small head lamp strapped to my forehead, but can now here all the 4 letter words coming from the 4 wheeler. In these situations, I can’t help it either. I cuss like a sailor too. If I had a quarter for every bad word uttered aloud and under our breaths the last couple days, I would be rich! We manage to get her run into the shed, him on the 4 wheeler and me huffing and puffing like a wheezing pachyderm.
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| Surrender all your hay at once! |
The hard part is over, right? Nope. First we have a shed full of cows and calves, we have to move pairs around just to get her to the calving pen. We get her in and are working on getting her head caught when I grab the lever of the head catch, and in a hurry and amongst all the excitement, and me still trying to catch my breath and sweating like a pig at a track meet with all my heavy winter clothes on, let her out the front of the head catch. Whoops…That IS NOT what the husband was saying. We have to now bring her back around and get her back into the catch pen. This time I make sure I am nowhere near the head catch. We get her caught and get some chains on those big toes. We finally after all the monkey business pull a 140 lbs. bull calf.
After getting everybody snuggled in to a pen for the night, we decide to make one more run around the lot. By this time it is 1:00 am. What do we find? You guessed it, another calf in a snow bank. This cow was a pet cow that eats cake out of our hands. We loaded her calf in the sled and she followed us into the shed, and we got her and her baby all tucked in for the night. No fuss or muss.
I am proud to announce after the week is over, and a couple of other moments that ended in sailor language being exchanged we are still married. As long as Mother Nature sucks it up and accepts winter is over, my marriage has a fighting chance of surviving the Spring.
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| Feeding Cows after the storm. |
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| Hitching a Ride |
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| Loving on my friends. |
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