City Slickers and working cattle

Having your cattle an hour away posses some interesting problems. First off, you friends may be busy and the idea of driving an hour to work cattle is not very appealing. I did not make any calls to ask for help so I guess I have no one to blame except yours truly. After church I stopped by the local Tractor Supply store in woodland to get a few items I needed to vaccinate and de-worm my cows. With these items in hand I drove to the ranch to see if I could round up a few warm bodies to help.

I found my wife and her friend and we roped in Dave whose daughter rides at the ranch to get the cattle down the field and into the corrals. So my crew is my darling wife, her friend and a guy with a prosthetic leg. Oh, and two dogs, my wife's Jack Russell, the little ball of hate, and a urbanism border collie. Well, sometimes you trust in the All Mighty and hope, although as I like to say, hope is not a plan.

We drive the cows down the fence line and into the corrals without much trouble except for the dogs running in front of cows and turning them away from the direction we are driving them. After some 'sailor talk' and a few rocks thrown for good measure, the cattle are the corrals. I set up the vaccine and dewormer and get the eartags ready as my wife brings a four or five cows at a time into the sorting pen and down the crowding alley. Dave says he up to anything so gets to work the back gate of the chute and I show him how to work the 'hot shot' if the cows refuse to get into the chute. I am running the headgate and squeeze and so we begin the process.

Usually my wife does the vaccinations while I run the chute, but being that we are short handed, I am running around like a three legged cat trying bury his poop on a frozen pond. I have not seen many three legged cats, but the image I have is probably close to the scramble I am doing each time a cow goes into the chute.

Catch her head, pull the squeeze rope tight, run over and get the vaccine gun, give her a shot, run back, get the worm medicine, squeeze out the right amount, pour it on her back, run back to pick up the ear tagger, remove the old faded ear tag with a dull pocket knife and put in a new one, run back, get back to the chute in time to let the cow out before she gets really mad and wants to kill me once she is free.

Multiply that times twenty five and you will get an idea of how the three stooges would have looked if they made a movie about working cows. After two hours we were done. I thanked everyone, especially Dave for hanging in there through the flying cow manure and frantic pace on one good leg. I drove home smelling like, well lets just say, like the back end of a cow.

I wouldn't have it any other way.