Happenings at Main Canyon Ranch: Why We Love What We Are Doing!!!

There have been many 'Happenings At Main Canyon Ranch' the past couple of weeks. Our days and nights are never ending and the heifers are calving on an average of 4 a day, and most of them are doing it on their own so we only have to check them two times a night if you go to bed at midnight, which is so much better then having to be awake for most if the night pulling calves!!!

We get up in the morning and start our day with a few cups of coffee and the sound of Zina calling for her morning loving and bottle, Zina has become an only child this week because Midnight got herself a cow mommy, or she is working on getting herself a cow mommy. I thought for sure that it would be love at first sight for the heifer, but I guess she can't see the same beauty and personality that I see in my little one. After our consumption of coffee, we start our feeding routine and moving the new moms and their calves out to the pasture. Then we load our horses and saddles to head to Willow Creek to move the cows up to Crows Roost, which is a short nine mile trip with the loves of your life. Then it is back to Main Canyon to do the nightly feeding chores and check the heifers and put them in the corral for the night. Sounds simple and it looks good on paper, but in real life it goes like this......

Roger is nice enough to get up and make the coffee while I lay in bed with the covers over my head smelling the coffee thinking that surely it can't be morning already!! Zina is crying in the window insisting that I come feed her now, and of course since she doesn't have a tongue it takes about 20 minutes to feed her even with her newly modified bottle that just pours the milk down her throat. Then by the time I get Zina spoiled for the day Roger is ready to go feed the bulls and the heifers in the meadows, I can smell the coffee and it sure does smell great!!! When we come back from feeding, I have to do a quick check of the ready to pop heifers while Burt helps load the horses and throws the saddles on the truck to head to the creek to move the cows that have mastered the art of going no where. We stop by the house to get the dogs and this is when I finally get my cup of coffee that is now cold, then we go out to the truck and argue over who is driving. Driving isn't considered a privilege to us because the one that doesn't drive gets to enjoy some of that stuff you call sleep.

When we arrive at the creek the driver is irritated at the sleeper so tension is high before we start with the most irritating cows (my loves) alive. Jay and Clay will have around 150 cows and new calves sorted out for us and already at the head of Main Canyon, so all we have to do is push them up to Crows Roost and close the gate. Then the next day we push them to Trail Canyon and close the gate, and on the 3rd day we push them up Trail Canyon to the top of Winter Ridge. Yep that's how it is planned out, but when it takes an hour and half to get the cows and calves around the first corner, across and little stream, up a tiny hill, and one rider is already upset with the other for not getting to sleep, well this throws the team work off just a bit. By the time the sun is setting and you haven't even made it 3 miles, you have wasted your entire day because the ever so nice cows will just turn the calves around and take them back to the green meadow within an hour and you have just spent 8 hours screaming your head off trying moving them the same distance. You know............ .........sometimes you just want to shoot them all.