Day 9 - Tuesday June 5

[SD] Powder River Tuesday 2007-06-06

(Click on the album to see pictures)

Today, everyone over-slept. We were tired. Phillip and I woke up at 6 am. Everyone else slept until 6:30 and then we woke them as breakfast was ready. Today we are to brand, vaccinate, castrate and ear tag the caves. We headed over to Lester Lake ( this is where the horses are in a corral). When we arrived it took almost an hour to find the cattle (small pastures are still big out here). Once we found them, we drove them to the corral and separated the cows and caves. We roped, branded, vaccinated, castrated, and ear tagged the caves. I was a wrestler today. For awhile I held small caves by myself, as we were short on help. Philip castrated. Alana Vaccinated and ear tagged. Travis branded. Colt roped. Nate and Arthur held the big caves. Susan helped Alana. Then a couple others showed up and then I had help holding. Jodi helped me hold the caves. Spencer roped. Once we were done, we went to gather more caves in the Cotton wood pasture. Nate and I gathered about 200 headed of cattle. We then helped sort after driving them across the pasture. We then drove Paulton's cattle across the creek area back to Lester Lake. We branded the caves in that group. Then we worked some of the cows. While we were gathering, some of the crew worked the other cows. They dipped them, vaccinated and pregnancy checked the dry cows.
It wasn't a big day, we branded about 42 caves in all. We even branded three caves at the end of the day that had to be trailered in. On the way home we learned the ranch is about 10 miles by 25 miles. That's a lot of ground.
Tonight we ate supper outside on a picnic table. It must have been around 9:30-10 pm. We had pulled beef, hamburgers, salad, desserts. We sat around and listened to stories that Dan the manger of the ranch told of experiences by friends in Wyoming. It was a late night, but we were satisfied with our work and the good food made the day end magically.