March 4th, 2010
Last Tuesday we drove to the “Horse Barn” tack shop in Kamloops where we purchased two 25kg bags of horse treats! Today our horses got treated 
Giving our horses a treat is a real WIN WIN situation, especially when Nan is giving the treats since Nan loves to give and the horses love to receive.
Nan the horse whisperer
We now have 32 horses at Echo Valley Ranch, well, 30 really because 32 includes two donkeys; you will see that one of them, Don, does not need to be served treats because Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Echo Valley Ranch & Spa, Horses, The Ranch | No Comments »
February 8th, 2010
Falconer Brian Davies has been working with Echo Valley Ranch for over 14 years and one of the things he does is raise Gyr and Peregrine falcons. Brian is a falconer from way back and we will be writing more about him in later blogs; Frank L. Beebe, who is very well known in the falconry world and had a book published “The Compleat Falconer”, rates Brian amongst the top best natural falconers in the world – coming from Frank, that means a lot.
We will be blogging the raising of Gyr falcons at Echo Valley Ranch, from the time the falcon makes its nest in our falcon mews through to having young falcons ready for delivery to other falconer’s who will use them to hunt.
We will also be posting some pictures of Brian flying the falcons to the lure, which our guests love to watch; Brian releases and flies falcons to the lure every day at the ranch at 1:30PM.
We do have a short video showing Brian flying the falcons www.youtube.com/watch?v=WAiiv40n1xU
The two pictures that come with this blog show what needs to be done when, on very rare occasions, the lure is not moved away from the diving falcon in time to avoid a strike. The pictures show the strike which is immediately Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: "Echo Valley Ranch", Falcon, falconer
Posted in Falcons, The Ranch | 1 Comment »
February 5th, 2010
We wrote a blog back in December which we called “Never a dull moment”, it was about how seven of our calves managed to squeeze under the fence and how we managed to eventually round them up and return them to our ranch, six of them that is; another couple of weeks past and we concluded that the remaining one was lost.
Apart from being winter, which would make it harder for the calf to find food, we have an unusually large wolf population in our area, so you can imagine our delight when Glen spotted the calf on one of his trips down to the High Bar. It had been out fending for itself for almost six weeks!
To ensure that the calf would stay in the same general area, Glen and Numchai placed a bale of hay there and then started the process of returning the calf to the ranch. The first step, after the calf had eaten some hay, was to drive it on foot to a corral at a neighbour’s ranch.
The next step was to return to Echo Valley Ranch to hook the horse trailer to the Ford truck, to get the lasso and then head on back out to move the calf out of the corral and into the trailer. Flint and I joined Glen and Numchai to give a helping hand; I was not much help since I was there to take pictures.
Seeing as there was just the one some-what wild calf, it was decided to lasso the calf and with the calf on the end of a rope force it to jump into the trailer. The following pictures tell the story of this endeavour
Read the rest of this entry »
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February 2nd, 2010
Back in days gone by it was not uncommon for a cowboy to drop in on a ranch on his way to some place else, and now days, at Echo Valley Ranch, it is of course quite common for a guest to spend time with us who may be from a far away land.
We also have unexpected planes drop in on us from out of the sky so we just take it in our stride when, because of the prevailing weather conditions, a helicopter on its way to Yellowknife takes advantage of being able to land safely at our ranch.
This was the case on February 2nd and it was our pleasure to accommodate Ed and Joel of Tindy Air, who had just finished a job in BC and now taking the helicopter they were flying back to Yellowknife; they had planned to stop in Kamloops this day but Mother Nature intervened and took away that option.
Ed and Joel were pleasantly surprised to find that Echo Valley Ranch is a 4.5 star guest ranch, they enjoyed their stay with us and will be telling their friends about their experience – we like that
Having a pilot with experience flying in northern regions was a bonus for me since I was able to learn from them about some more nuances of Arctic flying, which will stand me in good stead as I plan the trip I am planning for this summer to Grise Fiord NU Read the rest of this entry »
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February 1st, 2010
All of the Echo Valley Ranch related blogs, residing on Norm’s Blog, have been transferred to the new Echo Valley Ranch & Spa Blog – this one
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