Hi, I’m Mike and this is Our Wyoming Life
To me the ranch is one of the most beautiful places on earth, from here I can see the sky
and the cotton candy clouds to a million stars, twinkling just for me.
I can take a ride, see an bald eagle fly by and watch a family of rabbits play in the
grass, never knowing the danger just above them.
Real life plays out every day around here, life and death.
It’s a tradeoff and one that can be hard at times.
During calving, you spend a lot of time trying to save calves that seem to be intent on getting
themselves in trouble, getting stuck in mud, losing their mom, getting away from the herd
where the coyote can see them as an easy meal.
Life and death, its everywhere around us, and in some instances it can’t be avoided.
The ranch is a business, that’s the bottom line.
Its here to help me support my family, raise my kids, send them to college and hopefully,
maybe one of them will want to do the same thing I am, just a million times better.
You’ve heard me talk about the steers before, they were the escape artists way back in episode
4.
6 bull calves that were kept around the ranch from last year.
They are steers because they have been castrated and they are kept to fatten and butcher.
It’s basically the same thing that happens to a lot of the calves that we sell at auction
but the big difference from the meat that shows up at your grocery store to these guys
is the fact that we control everything that goes into them.
They eat hay and are technically grass fed beef but in addition they get a daily ration
of corn oats and barley that adds more fat to them, making for a more marbled and more
favorable tasting meat.
They don’t receive any hormones and are completely natural.
We call them grass fed and grain finished and we sell the meat at local farmers market
and to consumers from all over.
Today is the last day these boys will be staying on the ranch, this morning we load them in
a trailer and take them to a USDA inspected butchery.
Each steer will become about 400 pounds of hamburger, steaks, and roasts.
Which we are able to sell individual cuts just like a grocery store because we are USDA
inspected.
To get the process started we first do some paperwork, the local brand inspector comes
out and takes a look at the steers, makes sure they belong to us and signs off on them.
Then we hook up the truck to a stock trailer and back up to the loading cute.
These steers weigh over 1200 pounds each, they are not something you want to be in the
way and if they decide that they want to go somewhere, the best choice is to move out
of the way and let them go.
We get our gates set up so they have a straight shot into the trailer and we open the gate
to their corral.
Doing this by yourself can be a little dangerous, if something happens there is no one out here
to call for help but I have faith in my confidence and know how, as well as my running and jumping
ability if I need it.
The trailer is split into two compartments, and when it comes to loading a trailer you
want to put more weight toward the front, so we are going to split these guys into two
groups of three and try to put the heavier steers up front.
Using a tool called a rattle paddle we can persuade the steers to move the way we want
them to, slowly.
No reason to get pushy with a 1200 lb animal.
The trick to moving getting any livestock to move is to trick them into thinking its
there idea to go the way you want them to.
Right in to the alley, a narrow walkway that forces them into single file and then into
the trailer, where we close the door.
3 more to go, and it’s the same routine.
After all the steers are loaded it’s a 2 hour drive to the processing facility and
then its out of the trailer and through this very unassuming looking door.
In addition to our own beef, we also raise a few pigs each year that go to the same meat
plant, each yielding a couple of hundred pounds of pork.
That is also inspected and sold individually and in packages.
Pigs however are a lot more stubborn but eventually they get in the trailer also.
Some people may call it heartless, and since we have started this video series I have heard
it all.
But heres the honest to god truth.
Every animal ranch I care about, the ones that we finish for meat, probably a whole
lot more than the average animal.
I interact with them on a daily basis, I feed em, I clean them and make sure they are happy.
And when they leave the ranch, I thank them for helping me and my family live the life
we live.
Its not easy, and sometimes it’s even a little sad.
The girls are getting to the age where they ask where the pigs or the steers went, and
they are getting to the age where they can hear the truth.
The pigs and steers turn into meat that we sell so they can have toys.
Its not bad math, and they understand.
Erin calls it the circle of life, that’s a little too Disney for me, I just call it
the way things go.
In about a month we will have freezers full of meat, ready to supply our customers with
beef and pork that stands well above anything in the local grocery and we guarantee it.
The ranch is a cycle and one that starts over every year, new steers will be selected and
new piglets will arrive, chicks will be hatched and I’ll get a year older, Erin will get
a year younger and we will survive.
New life starts as well, calving season is just around the corner, Erin is getting the
gardens ready to plant and the grass is turning green.
Spring is the emergence of life on the ranch, and although saying goodbye is hard, we will
soon be saying hello to many new lives.
Thank you for being here to experience it with us, in our Wyoming life.