People Who Help the Rancher/ Not all Calves Live

 It's been a hard spring here in Northwest Colorado.  Some of the old timers would tell you that it has been a normal kind of spring from their youth.  They'd say that a 4-wire winter was normal.  That's how they measure snow depth up here in the snowy ranch country.  A 4-wire winter means that the snow covers the top wire and the fence posts for most of the winter.  During the last 30 years, most winters have been 3-wire winters.  This year it was a 4-wire winter.  We've even had years with more snow but the snow has always melted from the valley floor earlier and then there would be 10 or 12 inches of new snow in one day but it would all melt the next day.  The snow this year has been really wet with even periods of rain mixed in and the snow  on the valley floor has remained longer.  There is still 2 feet of snow on the meadow, or two feet of water in the low areas with a crust of snow on top.  This is actually a good thing because it marks the end of the snow on the meadow.  In less than ten days, the snow will be gone from the meadow and maybe even in the yard.

Please don't make me stay here on the porch!

It's been a hectic week here at the ranch.  For the most part, the weather has not cooperated.  We've had 4 or 5 calves every day during the blizzards and rains.  Today is the first time we have had two sunny days in a row.  The cold and wet is hard on everyone.  People are grouchy because they're used to sunny skies even if it is cold, even the dog's really wet, smelly and sad because he isn't allowed in the house, the cows come to the gate and want to get on the road because it is dry, and the calves shiver.  Luckily, it only takes about a half day of sunshine to make things better for everything; but the dog still smells so he can't come into the house until he gets a bath.

Even when you use a kind, soft voice, Fritz doesn't like to be told he's too smelly to come into the house.

This weather is hardest on the calves.  Like all living things, they need the vitamin D from the sunshine to be healthy and during this past week there has been a decided lack of vitamin D available since there was no sun. They spend so much energy staying warm that their immune systems become week and some of them get sick.  We don't know why some calves get ill and other calves born under the same conditions remain healthy.  The day that the calf  in the last blog was born, there were two other calves born also.  Of those two calves, one remained healthy and with its mother.  We watched the other one carefully. It never seemed to get its strength after it was born and was more susceptible to the cold.  He had to come to the house.  He was given every bit as much attention as any calf  but he just continued to get worse.  It is hard for a rancher to lose a calf.  They'll stay up all night long, spend more money on supplies and vet bills than the calf will ever bring, do everything in their power to try to save the calf; but sometimes you just can't save them.  Every rancher I know is devastated when a calf dies.  They rejoice in helping things live, grow and thrive and it's almost like a personal failure when you put that much effort, energy and prayer into helping a calf and it dies anyway.

  I always tease my husband, Jim, about when he chooses to go swimming in the Yampa Rive in April. He usually has to wade across the river in waist deep water carrying a calf during the this month. That's what happened this week also. There always seems to be one cow each year that thinks she needs to have her calf on the island even if there is more snow there. We watch and when the snow goes down enough, we hook up an electric fence but one morning we looked out and. there she was, a cow with her newborn calf on the island. That meant a trip across the railroad bridge, over the fence, across the deep snow to the calf.  The cow ran to the river calling her calf and waded in.  The calf stepped into the shallow water and then jumped into the deeper water.  There was only one thing for Jim to do, follow her into the water and grab her when she started to sink.  He waded across with waist to chest deep water with the calf in his arms.  Of course, they both were cold and wet.  He put the newborn bull calf in the tractor and they both came to the house.  I dried the calf off with towels and the blow drier while Jim took a hot shower to warm up.  When the calf was well dried, we gave him his ear tag and returned him to the meadow and his mother.  He is doing really well in spite of his rocky start and the miserable weather.

Daren Clever, Brand Inspector for Routt, Summit, and Grand Counties

This week we have been lucky to have visits with three people who are helpful to us at our ranch; the brand inspector, the vet, and the farrier (man who takes care of our horses feet). The first visitor was the Brand Inspector. Brand Inspectors work for the Brand Board for the State of Colorado.  The Brand Board's purpose it to register and administer all  brands within the state, inspect and verify ownership of all cattle, horses, sheep, and goats in the state, inspect and license all processing plants, inspect and license all elk and deer farms and prevent stolen livestock for the entire state.  That's a pretty big job so they have brand inspectors for different areas of the state.  The brand inspector for our area is Daren Clever.  He is also responsible for Summit and Grand Counties also.  If you ask Daren what the main part of his job is, he will tell that it is to keep  livestock from being stolen .  We had him come out to inspect our bucket calf, "no number", so that we could give her to the grandkids on the front range.  He had to actually see the animal and then prepare a brand paper which will show the transfer of ownership from us to Justin and Taylor.  Because she will not have a brand the kids will need to show these ownership papers whatever they decide to do with her and allows us to take her to them.  We  pay a fee for this service.  That is where the brand board gets the money that pays Daren's salary.  Included in that fee  is a dollar for Beef Check Off.  Years ago, everyone who sold a live animal in the process of bringing beef from the pasture to the plate voted to pay this Check Off dollar to help make sure that farmers and ranchers knew the best way to take care of their land and animals, how best to meet the needs of the consumer, to teach consumers how to handle meat for safety and tastiness as well as many other things.

"I can't wait to get to the front range where there's no snow or mud."

The second person we visited with this week was one of our three veterinarians, Dr. Lee Meyring.  There are lots of vets around the state; however, there are very few "large animal" vets.  In fact, there are so few that there are scholarships being given to get people to encourage them to become large animal vets.  Working with dogs, cats, and other pets is a lot easier than working with horses, cows, and other large animals.  Most pets come into the vet hospital; while the vet frequently has to travel out to where the cow is.  Most pets can come in for treatment at an appointed time; while when a vet is called to treat a large animal, it is usually outside, during a crises, at any time of the day or night.  Luckily, the calf that we found whose mother had abandoned it was able to go to the vet hospital because she fit into the front of the truck.  (She couldn't go into the back of either truck because they were both full of snow and the trailer was still in snow that was over its tires.)  She was dehydrated, hypothermic (her body temperature was too low) and didn't have enough energy to even suck from the nipple on the blue bucket.  She spent the day at the vet hospital getting electrolytes through a tube in her neck which led directly to her blood stream. She is home now and if she survives, she will become another bucket calf.  We have lots of options for her; the grandkids, the place in Craig, and three different people have called up asking if we had any bucket calves.

One very sick calf.  You can tell by how his tail is tucked under, back arched and head down.

Entrance to the Vet Hospital

Large Animal Vet, Dr. Lee Meyring.  He comes from a ranching family which is both in Nebraska and Jackson County, Colorado.

Dr. Meyring checking the temperature of the calf's mouth.

The third person who came to help us was our farrier, Jason Stewart.  While most large ranches with lots of horses have someone who can do their own horseshoeing; since we've never had more than four horses at any one time, it has always been most efficient to have someone come and do the trimming or shoeing.  The horses hooves grow like fingernails and need to be trimmed so the horse's legs and ankles will line up correctly, the horse can maintain good balance and the hoof won't break off so that it hurts.  It's too early to put shoes on the horses here because the snow will ball up in the shoes and the horse is unbalanced. It's like they're walking in high heels. Besides, there is so much thick, gooey, mud that it has been known to pull the shoes off the horse.  We'll wait another four to six weeks, depending on how fast the snow goes, before we put their shoes on. If we only rode our horses on the soft grass of the meadow or hayfields, we wouldn't put shoes on; but, the pasture is rocky, the dirt becomes extremely hard when it dries and to take the cattle to and from their summer pasture we have to ride on paved roads.  It only took Jason a little while to trim our horses feet.  We can begin to get them into condition for the summer.

Jason Stewart, our farrier.

Come on, JB, pick up your foot.

A close up of the trimmed hoof.

Hope you are having a beautiful spring, we've got a wall of gray clouds coming our way.

Hurray for April! Maybe

During March, the snow level has dropped a lot.   April 1 at my friend's house in town.

 March is supposed to come in like a lion and leave like a lamb.  That's not the way it was this year at the ranch.  The first part of March was wonderful but the last week of March was wet, cool, and windy.  This kind of weather  is harder on new calves than really cold dry weather.  They need to be watched constantly.  I was gone for the last week in March to attend a couple of meetings with other cattle ranchers and to visit with the grandchildren during their spring break.  It was warm and windy on the front range with dry ground and temperatures which didn't drop lower than freezing. Because Jim and I are the owners and hired hands, we cannot both leave the ranch at the same time during the winter or during calving season.  While I was enjoying the warm dry weather, Jim was feeding and calving during the cool, wet, snowy last week of March.

On March 1, only the top pole could be seen.  This is April 1.  Lots of snow has melted.

The twin, no number, got a friend while I was gone.  The second bucket calf was one of three born that day and she shouldn't have had any problems.  The day was cool, not cold, and while it was snowing, they were only showers and the winds were calm. During the wet days, we feed the cattle twice a day instead of once.  The calves can snuggle in the dry hay to be warm and dry.  Jim had taken the first load of hay out to the cattle and  was moving snow to clear more area for the cows and calves.  He watched as the first two calves were born and got up and fed.  After some time spent having lunch and doing some trenching around the house, Jim returned to the meadow to give the cattle their second feeding.  He noticed a cow off by the trees which looked like she was trying to get a calf up to nurse. After he took a second load of hay out, the cow hadn't yet seemed successful in getting her calf up.  It was then that he went to check on her.  For some reason, instead of calving on a high spot, this particular cow had chosen to calve in a low spot.  The calf was stretched out in 3 inches of water, sopping wet, with her head resting on a frozen cowpie (what we call cow droppings because they're usually round, fairly flat, and about the size of a large pie.)  The calf's head resting on that cowpie was the reason that the calf had not drowned.

Jim waded into the water and stood the calf up.  He put his fingers into the calf's mouth.  The calf weakly tried to suck on his fingers but her mouth was cold.  This is an indication that the calf had not fed and this calf was too weak to stand to suck from her mother.  Jim loaded her up into the cab of the tractor and brought her to the house.  She was weak, wet, cold, dehydrated and shivering.  (Shivering a is mechanism used by mammals to generate heat within their body but it does use what energy stores the animal has.)  The first order of business was to get some energy and fluids into the calf.  For cases like this, we keep powdered electrolytes to mix with warm water.  There are two methods of getting the electrolytes into the calf, through the mouth or through a needle inserted into directly into their vein. ( Humans use electrolytes for the same purpose and get them in the same manner; think Gatorade.)  We give our calves electrolytes through the mouth.  Because she was so weak and cold, she could have only about a cup at a time.

Between the feedings of electrolytes and then colostrum, the calf needed to be warmed and dried.  When drying a cold, wet calf, you begin with lots and lots of towels,  You rub and rub.  This, however, only gets the surface moisture off and the calf is still cold. Much of the wetness has come off the legs, tail and ears; but the thicker hair around the core is still very wet.  The core is that area which covers the heart, stomach, and other organs. If the calf it to get warm, you need to warm the core (Underside of the calf ) If you get the blood warm in that area, the warm blood is pumped to the rest of the body and this warms all parts of the calf.  This is when you bring out the blow dryers.  It takes a long time to dry a calf if you are using only one hair dryer.  The fastest we have ever dried a calf is 20 minutes when I called three neighbors to bring their hairdryers and four of us worked on one calf at the same time.  Jim, because he was alone, had to alternate between feeding and drying the calf and it took most of the evening.

Early the next morning, the calf was returned to her mother.  The mother had been looking all over for her calf and was delighted to get her back.  It was another cold, wet, windy, day but all the calves were bouncing around, chasing each other, snuggling in the hay, and feeding; except for the calf that had gotten to come to the house.  Due to her being born in water and nearly drowning,she just didn't have the energy to keep up with her mother.  She was standing with her head down to her knees, wet and shivering by the second feeding of the day.  She just wasn't going to make it on her own.  She got to come up and join the first bucket calf.   Once we got her strong enough to stand and feed on her own, the bond between her mother and her was broken. She would have to become a full time bucket calf.  We had the same options for her as the first calf;  instead of going to the grandkids, she was going to live in Craig and get a new cow mother. Yesterday, April 2, the calf left for her new home.  It is our obligation to make sure that every calf gets a good start and is a healthy calf.

This calf is healthy and ready to be adopted by another mother cow in the low country.

A sign of spring, the snow gets rough on top.

The end of March has seen a lot of changes in the snowpack.  The snow depth has begun to fall as the snow melts.  One sign of spring is the golden willows change color.  They go from gray sticks along the river and creek banks to an actual yellow gold.  The surface of the snow changes from smooth to bumpy and the texture of the snow goes from a fine powder to coarse sugar granules and the snowballs go from smooth easily packed balls to hard to pack ice balls. When the snow melts, it melts from underneath.  Under the crusty surface, the snow becomes like a honeycomb, lots of air pockets with a crust on top.  It becomes impossible to walk on the crust and even the lightest weight breaks through.  Only the fox can maneuver across the crust on a warm afternoon.

Snow melts from underneath.  In April water runs everywhere.

April brings warm sunny days, mostly.  It also brings water running everywhere.  This is when all the ditching that we have been doing all during the month of March pays off.  It helps the water run off down the hill.  On the meadow,however, there is a berm between the feed and calving grounds and the river.  This keeps the water from running into the river and causes it to settle into the ground where the soil serves as a natural filter.  This is one way that we help to maintain good quality water in the Yampa River.

April is so changeable.  The first of April had sunshine and temperatures in the low 50's.  The second of April had sunshine and temperatures in the high 50'.  Today, April 3, wasn't a nice day on the ranch. It was cold with a blizzard of wet snow.  We have been monitoring the animals all day, making sure their mothers are well fed, that each calf is well cared for and warm.  Tonight, the twin will have a guest.  One calf seems to be weaker than the most and can use a night out of the cold and wet.  He will be brought up to the shed late at night, given supplemental feed both night and morning and returned to his mother in the morning.  We have found that our cows will take their calves back if we keep them only 12 hours at a time.

April 3 brings a blizzard with cold wet snow.  Maybe the sun will shine tomorrow.