Hi I’m Mike, all year long on the ranch works toward this one day, today.
When calves get brought in, sorted from their moms, loaded on trailers and sold at auction.
It’s the ranches one pay day of the year, today on our Wyoming life.
Its early, I’m waiting for the sun to rise a bit so I can see anything out there.
I’m also waiting for help to arrive.
Ive got a few neighbors coming in this morning to help sort calves, Erin will also be out
to help after her mom gets here to hang out with kids.
But its ok that we have a few minutes cause it gives me a chance to hang out with you.
Today is going to be a busy day, well its been a busy week, getting ready to ship calves
off to auction.
Fixing fence, mending corrals and moving cows.
We had an unexpected visitor this week when when blake from the youtube channel guy in
Wy.
Popped into the ranch.
We had talked in the past about doing something together but he was in town and gave me a
call.
We got to hang out for a bit, get to know each other and he even took a look at a leaking
fuel line on a tractor of ours.
If you haven’t had a chance to check him out yet please do so, hes right here in Wyoming
also, in fact hes the only other Wyoming youtuber I have met.
He ranches down by Cheyenne and is definitely worth checking out.
I’ll add a link to his channel in the description.
After our visit from Blake it was right back to work though as I had to get all the calves
moved up from about 5 miles back on the ranch were they have been spending their summer
with their moms.
Before we even got to the project at hand today, the sorting of calves and loading in
the trucks for auction we have to get the cows and their calves home to the corrals
and loading chutes.
This process starts a few days before sale day.
The cows and calves currently live on a huge expanse of land, roughly 2 miles wide and
2 miles deep.
The goal here is to gather up all the cows and the calves, and start them moving toward
home.
The problem is that they are widely spread out.
The solution to the problem consists of finding the cows and their calves that are farthest
from home and start there, with only a few cows and start them moving toward the gates,
which are miles away.
Its up and down hills, looking in valleys and ravines, searching for any hidden animals.
If a calf gets left behind it will not only be missing when its time to load trucks and
trailers which could and would cost the ranch revenue but a lone calf left down here could
possibly become a target for coyotes and even if we did go back and find it, moving a single
calf is a huge pain as they don’t have the herd mentality of the cows.
So in the end its better to take the extra time and make sure they are all together,
where the calves will follow the cows and the cows kinda know where they are going.
It’s a long process gathering all the hidden cows and calves but once they are all located
and moving toward one specific gate things get a bit easier.
Most of the cows have been through this many times and know where they are going and in
order to help them along we will use a tractor and a bale of hay to entice them to move where
we want them to go.
Food, as it is for me, is a huge motivator for cows and after a few hours of gathering,
grouping and moving the herd we eventually end up back at what we call our home pasture.
About 400 acres that leads directly into the lot, a 3 acre area that will keep the cows
and calves together until we get to sorting them off.
Getting them into the lot, is a bit more of a trick and one that I cant quite do myself.
Even with food put down to lure them into the area, they don’t want to go through
the gate.
Most are happy to just hang out and eat grass, and the calves who haven’t been moved too
much just don’t understand where we want them to go or what we want them to do.
Luckily Erin sees my plight from the house and hops on a four wheeler to come out and
give me a hand, and within a few minutes we have most of the cows and calves pushed through
the gate, into the new pasture we want them to hang out in overnight.
Tomorrow is the big day and we feed them and make sure they are calmed down before we get
to work.
As the sun begins to rise on sale day, our help arrives and our first job is to sort
the bottle calves.
Sunshine is the only bottle calf that will be staying on the ranch, the rest, yes including
Gunther, will be sold at auction.
This is goodbye to Gunther but it’s the way things go around here.
Next year there will be another Gunther and we will go through the whole process again.
It can be sad, selling calves is very bittersweet for me.
I put a lot of work into making sure these calves are healthy and well.
Many of these calves I held in my arms after they were born, bringing them into the shop
or barn for medical attention.
The kids name quite a few and even they have to learn that every calf that is born here
on the ranch means the money to pay a power bill, buy fuel, or fix a tractor.
It’s a business and as much as I would love to keep every calf that I grow close to, its
not a realistic idea.
Each calf that we do keep, costs us money and every one has to be worth it.
After the bottle calves are sorted off and loaded in the corral, ready to get on the
truck its time to bring in the rest of the cows and the calves.
Moving them into progressively pastures, into holding corrals where they will be sorted.
Coordination between everyone helping is key here, we are keeping back about 13 calves,
some to complete the kids herds, each of our kids, Mackenzie, Grace and Lincoln have a
herd of 5 cows, whos calves are sold in their names and the money put toward their college
education, other calves are kept to finish and butcher for farmers market sales of beef
next year.
Every one helping needs to know which calves we are going to keep and a list is spread
around so everyone can keep an eye out for those calves and we can sort them into a separate
corral and make sure they don’t get on the truck.
The rest of the calves are marked to go to auction and are sorted off of their moms in
the alleys.
Narrow but long strips of corrals, that enable us to push the calves back and hold them while
their moms move past us and to the other end.
Allowing us to then move the calves into a separate corral before moving their moms back
out the other end and back into a holding corral.
Our help working on the back end of the herd in the larger corrals keeps the cows and calves
moving up toward the sorting corrals and the process repeats itself over and over with
loads of 10 to 20 animals until they are all sorted off and the corrals are full of calves.
Just in time as a the trucks arrive and back up to the loading chutes.
We have two semi trucks to load today, each can hold up to about 100 calves.
The trailers themselves are a labyrinth of compartments and a maze of gates, ramps and
holding areas.
Katchina and Shawn are hauling calves for us today.
I'm Katchina, I drive for Fowler Trucking
Based on weight and number it depends. we load from front to back
we load Down first,
then we pull this,
then I'll open this here and we can load the nose deck
we can load about 106 calves
this is the doghouse
for the extra, you can fit 5 or 6 calves up here
We're standing on what they call the top deck
ERIN: And this is the belly?
This is the big long belly
ERIN: How many calves go down in the belly?
32 and 32 are top and bottom deck
in the nose deck will hold 10
12 and 10 in the nose
and then 15 to 17 on the back depending on the size
When Katchina is ready, we had a little conference about the number of calves that we are going
to load in each compartment then we start loading calves, and I try to remember each
group she needs, was it 25 then 25 then 32, then 5?
Well she will yell at me if I’m wrong.
Luckily loading the calves goes smoother than my memory and with the help of our crew, who
has all done this before all the calves are loaded on the two separate trucks and they
head down the road toward South Dakota to our closest sales barn and auction house about
2 hours away.
While the trucks are enroute, we take some time to push the cows out of the corrals and
back out onto to pasture, where they will bawl for their calves until their milk dries
up and they settle down.
We also move our calves we are keeping on the ranch, the steers and the heifers to another
corral where they have food and water.
For the first time in years, Erin and I head over to the auction with, kids in tow, mostly
to take you along with us.
Our auctions are also done on the internet, so we usually stay at home to watch from there.
Another reason we stay home is because the moms who have just lost their calves are going
to be looking for them for the next few days and its better to stay close in case they
take out a fence or something trying to find their babies.
But down the road we go, and into south Dakota and arrive at the sales barn and auction.
Where 9000 calves will be sold today and trucks are everywhere, unloading calves from 3 different
states where they have been raised for this very day.
The sales barn and area its spans over many acres, with hundreds of pens to keep calves
separated by seller on one side of the barn to buyers on the other.
Even as more and more trucks arrive outside, the auction is going on inside and calves
are brought in one side and sold to buyers from all over the area.
It all happens very quickly and after a sale is made, they are moved out the other side
of the barn and into waiting pens where the buyers will pick them up over the next few
days and take them to feedlots where they will be fattened over the next year and eventually
end up in your supermarket.
This whole day brings another season to an end on the ranch, the calves are gone but
the ranch still exists and goes on, which I learned when my phone rang in the middle
of the sale and I found out from one of our hunters that is on the ranch now that a bunch
of cows have broken down fence and gotten into the yard, right up to the shop, our house
and Erins gardens.
Not a good thing and actually could be very bad as cows could do a lot of damage if they
wanted to.
Luckily for us, I was able to call my neighbor Gary to come and help move the cows out of
where they were and back out into the pasture where they were supposed to be.
We decided to leave the auction early and get back to survey the damage where the cows
had broken about 20 feet of fence and needed to be pushed back out and fence needed fixed
to keep them as far as possible from our house, where we are expected to sleep tonight, with
the sound of 160 bellowing moms in the background, needless to say, we will be sleeping with
the tv on tonight, probably pretty loud.
I’ve heard a lot of ranchers say that today is the day they work all year for, the one
paycheck for the ranch and I can understand that, but I also like to think that today
is the day that allows the ranch to work for all the other incredible experiences that
we get to be a part of.
Feeding cows all winter long, calving in the spring, and cutting hay in the summer.
Living life out here in the rolling hills and tall wheat grass, meeting people and making
friends, just like you.
It’s a cycle and the cycle continues, coming up on our Wyoming life we will be getting
ready for winter, finishing steers, working with our remaining calves, fixing water lines,
and apparently mending more fence as well.
Erin has some really cool stuff coming up as we get ready to build a new high tunnel,
she takes a stab at winter growing and a whole lot more.
We’ve had a few people ask us about getting their very own Our Wyoming Life t-shirt and
I’m proud to announce that just this week we have partnered with amazon to offer Our
Wyoming life t-shirts for sale right on amazon.com.
Head to amazon and search our Wyoming life and you will find them, there.
We are also allowed to submit some of our own designs, so if you have an idea for an
our Wyoming life t-shirt, tell us about it in the comments and we can see if we can make
it happen.
Subscribe and check us out of facebook.
Also make sure you go check out Guy in WY, hes got some really stuff going on as well.
Thanks for being here and thanks for joining us in Our Wyoming Life.