Hardscrabble Times

When I started out with cattle, everything I knew about them was written on a check for $11,400 that I wrote for nine cows and five calves. That was in 2005 and I guess I’ve learned a few things about bovines since then.

One of these things is how tough and resilient they are to foul weather. Take, for instance, the surprise calf that was born the night before last when it was about 14 degrees below zero.

Yeah, -14.

I wouldn’t normally plan for our cows to calve this early, and this one actually arrived a bit early — I was expecting a February calf. Many ranchers do start calving in January and I’ve seen other early calves in pastures in recent days.

I spoke with a veterinarian about this and he said they can handle extremely cold temperatures just fine so long as there’s no wind or blowing snow. The mother cow licks the calf dry and gets it to nurse warm milk quickly.

But the real question is, why do cows often seem to wait for bad weather conditions — like extreme cold or a snowstorm — to have a calf? Some say it has to do with barometer changes. That may be the case. But why? I’ve begun to wonder if there’s some evolutionary component to this. Perhaps over time cows became genetically programmed to have calves during foul weather because predators move around less in these conditions. Or perhaps there’s some other reason we can’t fathom.

In the past years we’ve had a few calves born in bad conditions — actually a wet snowstorm in March or April scares me more than dry cold in January — and they all seem to do just fine. Perhaps we humans apply too much of our own sensibilities to these situations when in fact Mother Nature has it all under control.

When I checked on the cattle at dusk this evening the new calf was running in circles around the big cows. It was a balmy 18 degrees.

There are times for me when writing — anything — has all the appeal of smashing my thumb repeatedly with a ball-peen hammer. And so during these times I don’t. Write. Anything. Unless someone is paying for it, but then that’s another story.

The best remedy for this is usually outside work, and I’ve had plenty of that to do lately. At the ranch I manage I’ve moved the cattle to summer pasture, an act of wishful thinking. And I’ve built a new fence with the help of my friend Kevin Madler.

The other day when I walked into the barn tack room over there I found the old chest freezer we use to store feed tipped over, and the entire tack room in disarray. Not too hard to figure out a bear had gotten in there overnight.

I picked things up and turned the freezer back over. Mostly the bear had eaten cat food. I called Justin Krall, our local Division of Wildlife officer, and we discussed what to do.

I bolted the door shut that night and the next morning found the bear had unlocked the bolt and ransacked the tack room once again. Now this is a room with a door inside a barn. And the cat food is in a freezer. Pretty brazen stuff, not too far a reach, say, from breaking into a house.

Today Justin came by with an “unwelcome mat” to place in front of the door. Essentially it’s a piece of plywood with screws sticking up through it to make it uncomfortable for the bear to step in front of the door. I also removed all cat food from the premises, and improved the seat for the door bolt. If the mat doesn’t work the next step is a contraption that shoots pepper spray.

In addition to bear repellents, Justin, also had in his truck a young golden eagle that had been hit by a car on Highway 69 near Westcliffe. He was transporting it to the Pueblo Raptor Center where it was to be treated by a vet. The prognosis seemed good, as there was a lot of life in that eagle’s eyes. This explains the accompanying photo.

I suppose the purpose of a blog such as mine is to share some parts of my unordinary life, though sometimes I feel like bears running amok and wounded eagles up close and personal are just part of the daily scene around here. When I’m lucky it inspires me to write something or take a photo. Thanks for “bearing” with me.

It pays to be “in the now” in my line of work, but often I find my mind somewhere else and running on overdrive as I go about my ranch chores.

We keep a number of half-wild barn cats over at the ranch I manage. They usually scatter when I show up to take care of the horses and cattle. Today in the barn I was headed for the tack room to get feed for the horses when I noticed out of the corner of my eye a cat slinking behind the tractor about 10 feet away.

I had already scooped about three servings into the bucket when it finally registered that the cat by the tractor sure seemed a might bit larger than our barn cats.

And, come to think of it, it had black spots, too.

I walked back out the tack room door with the bucket in hand and a strange low growl emanated from behind the tractor. I headed for the front door in a hurry.

There’s a gate on the far east end of the building so I headed around there for a safer vantage. Sure enough, from about 30 feet away I could see that our newest barn cat was apparently a bobcat, though its ears looked smaller, its build was more slender and it was whiter than most bobcats I’ve seen. Perhaps it was a youngster.

It paced back and forth behind the tractor. Then it slipped into the workshop across from the tack room, turned around and stood with its neck out staring back at me.

I badly wanted my camera but it was at home. I thought about this for a minute then decided to drive to the house and get it. When I returned I first checked the perimeter of the barn for tracks in the fresh snow. There were no bobcat prints to be found, so I figured it was still inside.

With my camera in hand I carefully searched out the barn for the suspected bobcat, all the while being mindful not to corner it in some hiding spot. I never located the the creature, though there are a few potential hiding spots that I could not safely search out.

Sadly, what I did find were the half-eaten remains of one of our barn cats just behind the tractor. It was probably killed last night or this morning and had been covered with hay, in the style of wild felines (see accompanying photo). I left the dead cat there for now so I can tell if the bobcat returns.

No surprisingly I didn’t see any of the other barn cats around.

In weather this nasty it helps to be at least as smart as the animals that depend on you. This winter I’ve devised a system to feed both cattle and horses that is working out really well so far.

I have our hay supplier, Clint Seiling, deliver 1,100-pound round bales and drop them off inside a pen made of steel corral panels. Clint has a 35-foot dump trailer that can offload eight of these big bales sideways right into the hay pen. In the above photo you can see one bale in the feeder in the foreground and seven waiting for use in the hay-holding pen in the background.

When it’s time, I move aside a panel and can usually get these bales rolling by myself. This can be a bit of a workout — it gives the term “bucking bales” an entirely new meaning — but when I’ve wrestled the hay to where I want it, then I tip it over on a flat end. Then I pull the feeder around it. A word of caution: You don’t want to tip one of these things over on top of yourself.

This year Clint bound these bales with netting rather than twine. The netting makes it much easier, especially when the outer layer is frozen. There’s no cutting and I just have to upwrap the netting about three times from each bale.

Workout notwithstanding, I find this entire process easier and much quicker than starting a tractor in cold weather to pick up a bale, and then opening and shutting barn doors and gates to drive in and out of the paddocks, dealing with animals trying to escape, etc.

In one paddock I feed five horses this way, and I’m feeding five pregnant cows and a bull this way in another.  One of these big bales lasts each group of animals several days, so I can plan ahead for storms or variations in my schedule and know they are well-fed.