School is out and it's time for summer fun. Our first trip was loading up the kids and aunt Gloria to drive to the ranch in Iowa and work the cattle. Baby calves ranging from 1 day to 2 months old needed to be vaccinated and tagged. Saturday started off with an early morning thunderstorm, 1 inch of rain and lots of lightening. During a break in the rain, Craig headed up to the barn to get the cattle up into the sorting pens. Four neighbors came with their horses and rounded them up- this was also the moment it decided to rain and thunder dramatically again, so we stayed in the house and watched from the window as the cowboys braved the inclement weather.
Each person had an assigned job: Several men on horseback bring the cow and calf pairs into the first sorting pens, then a couple guys in that pen separate the cows out and funnel the calves into another pen, Cody gets the calves up and into the chute and calls out the sex, and Travis lowers the head gate on each calf (one at a time). Craig administers a couple shots, dewormer, and then tags their ear with a number- right ear for bulls, left for heifers. Marta is in charge of filling up the syringes with dewormer and replacing needles, as well as recording the sex and ear tag number of each calf. Leif started off loading the tag "gun", but then switched to helping Cody in the calf chute. This is tough physical work and due to all the rain, extremely muddy. After being slammed against the fence and having his feet trampled on by numerous calves, Leif decided to switch to manning the bar behind the calf. Once the calf is immobilized by the head gate, Leif slid an iron bar behind them to prevent them from backing up or another calf from coming up from behind them when the gate was released at the end. Gloria helped out as well with both these jobs, which was evidenced at the end by a coating of mud on all her clothes. Hanna took on Leif's job of loading the ear tagger, and then relinquished it to Elisabet after about number 50. Elisabet took her job so seriously she did not even take time for a joke or a smile. During this whole process, cows are bawling for their calves and the calves are bawling for their mothers- it's nearly deafening! 120 calves (66 bulls, 54 heifers) and 3 hours later, we were finished.
photo slide show:
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