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Ranch Notes
by Mike Moutoux, Western & Corporate Entertainer & Cowboy Poet

Ranch Notes February

 This month, I thought it would be nice to pass along some cattle-working advice I’ve picked up from Jerry. Now and then he passes along a little gem that I try to write down so I can remember it. “You have to think like a cow”, he tells me. “You have to feel what they’re feeling”. This comes up when we are trying to move a bunch into the corrals. Push them too fast and they won’t settle down and find the opening. Give them too much room and they’ll try to double back. It takes some teamwork too and you have to trust the other guy to be where they need to be. You have to be alert and feel everything going on.

“The time to turn back a cow is before she makes up her mind. Let her know you’re there.” Sometimes when we are moving a herd, there will be one or two that just don’t like what’s going on and they constantly test you.  Watch them close and stay where they can see that you are there to turn them back into the herd. Saves a bunch of time and aggravation.

“The idea is, to get the cows to do what you want, but let them think it’s their idea.” I’ve heard this advice applied to human relationships as well. You can influence people in subtle ways and get them to do what you want just like working cows. One or these groups (either cows or say your spouse or your boss), is being taken advantage of, I’m just not sure which.

The whole idea behind these tips is of course to move cattle without a lot stress on them or for cowboys. These tidbits often are shouted over the noise of bawling cattle and through the dust and often sting like criticism, but I appreciate the help. I know it’s advice passed along by a guy who has seen and done it all for a long time. From a guy who can think like cow.  Thanks, Jerry.

Ranch Notes December

Times are getting hard at the ranch as very little grass grew this year. The monsoon rains were late and poor, so Jerry has had to sell off some cows and buy a lot of extra feed. Many other ranches in the area have done the same. I only worked one day the entire month. Like most work days, it was a busy one. On this day, I worked with Jerry and another young fella who must have told me three times” I hate horses”. From the looks of things his ride for the day, Whitey Man, didn’t like him much either.

We gathered a couple of small pastures and fed the weanlings there to get them accustomed to coming in for the extra feed and then went off to work up the cows we had gathered the day before. (See November notes). We vaccinated the cows and took them back to their pasture. These return drives are easy in that the critters are more behaved as they are ready and willing to go home to their own pasture. That makes the work more like a stroll through the countryside than work. You can talk to the other riders more and just enjoy the scenery and the company.

I rode Charley all day; he really likes to trot everywhere, I have to ask him for a walk. He’ll cover a lot of ground that way with little effort on the rider’s part. A lot of horses will slow down on you when you trot and you have to bump them to keep them going. Not Charley. I still have a red spot on my back from the day he tossed me more than a month ago, but a horse that likes to cover ground like him almost makes you forget his faults. Almost.

Ranch Notes     November

It’s been a very busy month as we finish vaccinating cows, weaning calves, shipping, and the never-ending fence repairs. Several days stand out for me: the first was the day I rode the boss’s horse, Joe. The horse and I were finishing a drive and almost had our herd to the corrals when the cows gave us a time. They saw the corrals and wanted to go every which way but that way. Joe is the kind of cow-horse that takes that sort of thing personally. Eventually we got the cows closer to the corrals and the boss helped us push them in. He said, “Those cows probably taught you more in 15 minutes than I have in three years.” Not true, but I was glad I had a good horse under me. Joe knows cows.

The second day I was on the notorious Charley, (see October Notes), when we had a similar deal. Four head trotted off away from the herd we were moving and were making their escape where no one but I could see them. No choice but to gallop after them on a horse I know has a habit of ignoring commands at a lope! We were dodging yuccas, and prickly cholla cactus with each of us fighting for control. I won that round and we got the critters stopped and headed back in the right direction as help arrived. Score one for me for a change. Here’s a picture of Charley and I during a calmer moment. The tall plants in the background are yuccas.

 

Ranch Notes         October

We’re into the Fall works now; getting things ready for moving cattle which means some fence repairs here and there, shoeing horses and gathering pastures. The cattle are sorted, and we are preg-checking cows, giving vaccinations, and moving some to different pastures. The monsoon season didn’t put much rain at the ranch and the cows sure could have used some new green grass. Seems we are always keeping our fingers crossed for some rain. Gives you strange calluses wishing all the time.

On a sort of exciting/scary note, Jerry asked me to take one of the horses, Charley, out for ride to tire him a little so we could shoe him. The horse is real friendly in the corrals, but I led around for a bit to see how he behaved. Then I climbed on and had him walk for a short while and then we loped off up a sandy draw, which tires them out quicker than riding on hard ground. He wanted to turn back to the barn, but we worked that out and finally turned and headed back across a hill dotted with clumps of Bear grass. Bear grass is a kind of yucca that grows with long arcing leaves in clumps about four feet high. A hill of it is like a maze that is usually fun to ride through.

We were dodging clumps and I asked him to go right of one, but Charley veered left catching me completely off guard, Turns out, he went left and I went right without him. I don’t remember flying through the air at all. Too bad, I might have collected some images for a song or poem. I don’t even remember hitting the ground. At some point I was up again, a little dazed and bit bunged up. Charley was standing about 100 yards away and my first thought was, “I hope he didn’t step on one of my reins and break it.”

I caught him and rode him back feeling a little sorer all the time. The following morning, multiple bruises started showing up in various shades of purple. Judging by the number of them, I must have bounced two or three times hitting every rock possible. Lots of cowboy poems and stories include lines like, “luckily a rock broke my fall.” We all laugh at the line, but next time I hear that, I will smile to myself and think, “when you fall off a horse in New Mexico, there just aren’t too many soft spots to land in.”

Back at the corrals, I had to explain why my face was all skinned up and then we put those shoes on Charley. No sympathy from the boss who has seen lots of horse wrecks in his day. Treated me like just another cowboy.

The next morning, on my day off, he called to see how I was doing. Said he got to thinking that I might feel worse. Said something about us older guys taking longer to heal, or something like that. No sympathy for Mike, the cowboy, but I did get a little for Mike, the old guy. Older and wiser.

 

Ranch Notes September

 I had several exciting episodes this month; two on the same day. When an unbranded calf wandered into the ranch yard one morning, Jerry decided to go ahead and push it into the corrals nearby. I grabbed the easiest horse to get to which was one of the new horses that Jerry has been riding, Woodrow. Holy Smokes!  This horse has a high degree of built in excitability that I didn’t realize. I stayed in the saddle, but Jerry noticed that I was having a time keeping him settled down. We got the calf and I got a riding lesson about jumping on unfamiliar horses.

Earlier, we were in the process of branding a small group of calves. Jerry ropes and I flank them down. He usually dismounts to help tie them up so we can tie another one too and then we process them. This day he decided to let me tie them up alone. It’s harder, but doable. Especially the small ones. I had just slipped Jerry’s rope off when this Big one got up on me and took off. I did what I could to stay with him and tried to throw him down again. We bounced around about half way across the corral before I got the grip I wanted and heaved him down. Well, he bounced up like a two hundred pound rubber ball and was gone leaving me completely out of breath. The calf wasn’t breathing hard at all. Nice to be young and in shape! If I was either I might have got him. Jerry re-roped him and we got him that time.

Very little rain has fallen and grass is greening up here and there. Rabbit bush and prairies zinnias are blooming so there is some color out there. Best sighting of the month was a bobcat I got a brief look at while we were out looking for cows. Just a brown blur with a little white-tipped tail. I told Jerry I had seen him and he said he had seen a track earlier that he knew wasn’t a coyote. He doesn’t miss much. Not out there.

 

Ranch Notes August

I haven’t been at the ranch much this month; they’ve had a bunch of personal things to take care of down there that has kept them running around. It’s been dry and there have been two more lightning-caused grass fires on nearby ranches. Everyone is hoping that the remainder of monsoon season will be a lot wetter than the first half. The dirt tanks where cattle water are drying up and the grass really needs some more rain for it to get going.

We spent one day date-branding heifers and another gathering a pasture and branding the calves. Still riding Barlow and he’s getting the hang of this cow-work. He’s cutting better and neck reining a little. I’m trying to get him to walk faster and we won’t have to trot so much. He does have a nice slow trot and a nice slow lope.

I don’t believe I’ve mentioned the lizards we see all the time and there are a bunch. We see whiptails all the time, earless lizards, horned toads, and once in a while a collared lizard, which are just like little dinosaurs to me. Here’s a photo of one taken while I was turning some cows out one afternoon.

 

Ranch Notes   July

Two of Jerry’s oldest grandkids, Charlie and Foster, were down for an extended stay so we worked together on some fence and corral projects. They were a lot of fun and I miss them a bit now that they are back home. They are a lot like me when I was their age; chasing lizards, examining insects, and enjoying all the other distractions of nature. The ranch of course is full of these distractions.

Late in the month, lightning struck a yucca, (often the tallest things around) and started a grass fire, which burned about 100 acres on a neighboring ranch. The fire went through a fence and burned about a dozen wooden posts. Local firefighters got it out by 2 AM and Jerry and I were out first thing fixing the fence. By all accounts the fire seemed pretty impressive at night. We ran into some firefighters who were out the next day and one said when he was headed to the ranch that night he thought the fire line was ten miles long. 

Our monsoon season brings rain, but also brings these dry lightning strikes. The grass is just starting to green up in some low places, but more rain is needed to get the pastures greening up. We talk about rain a lot down here; as you might imagine.

We were shoeing horses (a job that requires a good sharp rasp), and Jerry retold a story I’ve always liked. A cowboy is using the edge of a file to turn some horseshoe nails and the rancher sees this and yells, “Hey, I fired a guy twenty years ago for doing that to a file!” Without looking up the cowboy replies, “Yeah, it’s the same file, too."

 

Ranch Notes June

June has been an interesting month; there is much to talk about. We are bottle-feeding an orphaned calf. This picture was taken when he was two or three days old. His mother died shortly after birth but he did get some of that important early milk. Follows us around when we’re in the corral where he stays. Very cute little Hereford.

Jerry has added two new horses to the work string: he’s riding Woodrow and I’m riding Barlow much of the time now. Here’s a picture of Barlow. We took the two horses for a ride on one of my days off because I wanted to see a part of the ranch Jerry’s family used to own. It includes a valley with some running water in it that is unusual for that part of the county. They called it the Cienega, which in Spanish means “a marshy place”. We rode up to the ruins of an old building that pre-dates the ranch. The outline of the foundation is there, but the only thing standing is the base of the adobe chimney. Jerry doesn’t know any more about it. Very old for sure and I’m thinking made by the Spanish. The Spanish history of he area predates the Anglos by quite a bit. The photo shows the chimney, the riderless horse is Barlow.  It was a great ride and I’m glad we got it worked out.

Probably the biggest news is that Jerry’s mom, Evelyn, passed away this month. She was 90. I guess she was quite a force on the ranch until just a few yeas ago. I did not know her then and sure would have enjoyed hearing her stories. Jerry has a bunch of his own and if I’m lucky, I’ll get to hear many more in the years ahead.

Ranch Notes May

We’ve started branding at the ranch, mixing that in with other chores. One memorable day included three close encounters that give you a glimpse at this cowboy’s workday.

The first involved an over-protective cow that we had in a corral so we could brand her calf. She took a run at me and I found myself vaulting over the top of the corral with the athleticism of a much younger man. Jerry even commented on my agility. The ability to clear fences in a single bound is relative when a 700-pound cow is intent on running you over.

The next close encounter was with a rattlesnake coiled up in the pile of logs I was splitting for Jerry. I had made several trips into the pile already when I noticed the 3-footer lying there. I now have his rattle in my collection. I’m supposed to making earrings for Emily with them, but so far they are just sitting on a shelf. The snake never rattled or gave any indication that he was aware of me, but sure could have nailed me if he wanted to.

The close encounter of the third kind involved a calf that Jerry wanted to brand that had wandered into the barnyard. Deciding to use the nearby squeeze chute for the job, Jerry ordered me into the back of the chute and told me to run my knee up between the calf’s legs so it wouldn’t sit down while he did the rest of the job. The calf let fly with a load of green goo with my knee catching the entire load. Jerry must have felt a little guilty because he called Emily with instructions for getting the stain out while I was on my way home. “Use cold water,” he said. Works on blood stains too! I learn all sorts of interesting things down there.

These close encounters aren’t going to be made into a movie, but they sure make the hours go by quickly. And though the hours may pass quickly, the moments linger in my mind for quite a while. Wow, that might make a good line for a poem…

It’s been dry, but a few things are growing on last year’s rain they have stored up. Beargrass flower stalks are pushing up through their mounds of leaves, as are a few yuccas, which will all bloom very soon. Some of the best blooms so far belong to the hedgehog cacti, which are almost invisible underfoot except when they are flowering. Then they are hard not to notice. Here’s a photo I got off my horse to shoot.

 

April 2009 Ranch Notes

April has been a month of odd jobs. We’re still working on rebuilding a corral and now have most of the posts set. The weather has been pretty nice for that kind of work. We’re still feeding in a few pastures; the cattle sure pay attention when we pull in now. Some even come trotting up which sure makes future round ups easier.

On an un-related note, my wife was talking to Jerry about writing a poem about the old ranch truck. I told her it didn’t seem right to make fun of another man’s tuck no matter how dilapidated it might be. Hearing that, he told me to go ahead. I’m still not sure; that old ¾ ton gets used for everything and rarely lets us down. Would I drive it to a high school reunion? Not even if it were washed and waxed! It’s almost embarrassing to be around, yet practical and almost lovable. Kind of like some people I know.

Ranch Notes March

 March has been a month of ranch improvements; which is a way of saying hard physical labor on fencing. We’ve been digging postholes for some 6-inch pipe and setting them in concrete. All of them by hand as the power auger makes the holes too big and then requires more concrete to fill. Jerry will weld old windmill sucker rod in between the posts demonstrating again that nothing on the ranch is wasted. His family has been recycling long before modern environmentalists started separating their glass from their plastic.

We were looking at a horse when Jerry passed along this old saying:

One white foot, buy him
Two white feet, try him
Three white feet, be on the sly
Four white feet, pass him by

This, I’ve learned is one of the horse superstitions that has been around awhile. The old cowboys didn’t blog on the Internet, so it’s been difficult finding out where this one comes from. When I poked around, I found out that there was another camp that preferred a horse with 4 stockings which gives us this:

One white foot, keep him not a day
Two white feet, send him far away
Three white feet, sell to friend
Four white feet, keep him to the end

Personally, my favorite color is quarter horse and I don’t care how many stockings he has; but the horse superstitions sure make you look and think.

February

We’ve been moving cattle around; getting some yearlings together and first year heifers a little closer to the home corrals where Jerry can keep a closer eye on them. We’ve also been doing some vaccinating so I thought I would include a photo of a squeeze chute.

This steel cage allows us to safely hold a large animal and give it shots and whatever else we want to do like de-horning or attaching an ear tag. The trick is to catch the head as they enter—some will try to beat you since they’ve been caught before. Others are pretty complacent having been through this before and discovering that it’s a temporary inconvenience. You don’t always know what they’re thinking until the last second.

On one of these days, we only had Jerry’s horse, Klondike with us. I rode him to gather a pasture and we got the yearlings into the corrals I had one that did not want to go into the second corral, Dealing with him, I quickly discovered how quick Klondike was. He didn’t wait for me to tell him what to do and if it weren’t for that saddle horn I would have fallen off. The other thing I discovered was how much I prefer the feel of my saddle to Jerry’s. Three years ago I would have sworn my saddle and my butt were not a good combination, but now I love my saddle. The question then, is: do people’s butts and their saddles start to look alike after awhile like some people and their pets or long-time married couples? If so, is this an improvement for my backside? Only my wife knows for sure!

January

Two, sort of related projects have kept us busy this month: weaning last year’s calves and fence repairs. The newly weaned calves will of course want to get back to their mothers so after gathering up a pasture and separating those big calves, we haul them to a different pasture. They’ll find a weak spot in a fence if we don’t find them first.

The boss has a 4-wheeler now and it’s a handy thing for the small repairs. We strap on a few tools and head for the fence. Saves time and gas, I’m sure. One morning we were at the top of a hill and could actually hear traffic miles away on Hwy. 90. It’s pretty unusual to hear traffic at the ranch—I wasn’t sure what I was hearing at first. The hours go by pretty quick working on a fence; we can talk while we work much of the time. The weather has been really nice and we are working in our lightweight jackets.

Ran into one of the young men who sometimes work at the ranch at the local feed store. He was one of he teenagers who inspired the humorous poem, “Teenagers at the Ranch”. We’ve had quite a few of them work on and off over the last year. Jerry is pretty generous about taking them on time to time. I’ve enjoyed them all.

 

December

We’ve been gathering up first year heifers and moving them closer to the home corrals and separating some of the bigger calves from their mothers so we’ve been doing a good bit of horse work. While cutting out what we wanted in the corrals one afternoon, my horse slipped and fell and I was on the ground before I knew what had happened. Neither of us were hurt so I climbed back on and we finished the job. It was a sober reminder of how easily and quickly one could get hurt doing what we do sometimes.

While I’m being sober, one afternoon we were coming down the road and got a good look at some ravens chasing a Golden Eagle. Turns out the whole bunch were feeding on one of the first year heifers that died while giving birth. So we lost the heifer and the calf. Life on the ranch can be exciting and romantic, but those days and moments are mixed with the sad and sobering ones that we take as they come and move on.

On a lighter note, at least one of the barn cats has discovered that I keep a few snacks in a pack for the days when we don’t come in for lunch. I had the pack inside a pickup truck and as I passed by I saw one of them helping itself to my stash. Ate all my beef jerky and was working on my peanuts and chocolate when I chased it off.