January 1^st 2010 –> January 2^nd 2010

There is never a dull moment when you have cattle on your ranch!

No sooner had we delivered two cows and twenty Black Angus calves to Echo Valley Ranch the “fun” started when seven of the smaller calves managed to squeeze under the fence by the watering trough, through a gate that had been left open by Brian, and started their wandering around looking for their cow mum.

Glen made short work of finding two of them but the real “fun” was in finding and bringing home the other five. I was not with Numchoke when he tracked down four of them and just as well I was not since I probably would not have been physically strong enough to keep up with him. Numchoke started to follow the tracks of five calves on a Skidoo but soon had to go on foot. The five split up into a group of two and three,  he followed the group of three and caught up with four calves – apparently only one of the two that split off rejoined the group. The four started off down a steep, VERY steep slope (cliff?) to Big Bar Creek below. Numchoke followed them far enough to see where they headed then had to climb back up, walk to the Skidoo and head back to EVR.

The following day Numchoke, Numchai, Glen and I headed out in the truck to the spot across from Big Bar creek that Numchai moved the calves to, they were still there – that was the easy part.

From here on in I was super impressed with Numchoke and Numchai! Glen’s idea was to drive the truck into the field and then across the creek and as close to the calves as possible to then lure them back with hay to cross the same place as the truck had passed. We did drive the truck to the creek side but did not go beyond that point, instead Numchoke took off across the creek, followed by Numchai, found an alternative place to drive the calves across the creek and had set themselves up in position to drive the calves across the place they had found by the time Glen and I had caught up with them.

Glen did not think the calves would want to walk across the ice because they would hear the water running under it so he suggested that we used hay to help lure them across.

Numchoke took off once again, faster than a border collie , and brought the truck and hay as close as possible to the creek – Numchai and Glen joined him at the truck and brought back bunches of hay. I, in the mean time, was positioned close to the calves and saying “calm calm, calm calm” – it worked in as far that the four of them simply stood under the tree and looked at me.

The hay was strategically located and before you knew it the calves were moved voluntarily across the frozen creek and to the other side. Then started the long walk across fields and eventually up on the Big Bar Ferry road to the “Red Neck Ranch” where we used a small coral to hold the calves until we could fetch a trailer to transport them back to EVR.

Charlie Coldwell drove the truck, which now had our trailer attached, and by now Flint was offering the opportunity to our guests to “bring home the calves” – Flint and two guests decided to join us, all in all there were now nine humans, three vehicles and a trailer heading out to do the real fun stuff of getting the calves out of the coral, into the trailer and back to EVR.

Plan A put forth was to lasso the calves and haul them up onto the trailer, this may have impressed the ladies but was not a very smart idea – Numchoke came to the rescue and suggested that instead we build a fenced off walkway with vehicles and material laying around. This worked like a charm; the calves were ushered to the truck and jumped right up into it. We learned something from Charlie though and that was, to get the calves to jump up onto the truck, he first collected some of the calves droppings and smeared it on the floor of the trailer, just at the entrance. I witnessed the calves first hesitating, sniffing the dropping, then jumping in! Charlie said this more often than not also works for getting a horse to go into a horse trailer.

Calves loaded, the truck, trailer and entourage headed to Echo Valley Ranch where the claves rejoined the small herd of Black Angus cattle – Wow, WHAT A DAY!!

I took MANY photos of this day’s events, and loaded a bunch of them up on Facebook (..wish WordPress was as easy), I included some of them with this blog.

Related posts:

1. We found our lost calf!
2. Delivering calves to Echo Valley Ranch
3. Chickens on the move!
4. New Year's Eve
5. Cougar Point after the fire

Tags: "Echo Valley Ranch", calves, Cattle Roundup, Echo Valley Ranch & Spa

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Cattle ranching, Echo Valley Ranch & Spa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.