Back Valley Ranch

Yesterday we brought a few expectant calvers to the front yard in preparation of babies coming any day now. Before that, we did the yearly Scour Guard vaccinations on the pregnant girls. We have a very basic vaccination program on the ranch, one of the most important ones is this Scour Guard vaccine. It protects the new babies from a common bacterial infection. Treated, it’s just like having a mild cold, but left untreated, it’s fatal to babies.

We don’t commonly like to run our cattle through chutes unless it’s necessary as we believe it causes stress on them being locked in a metal compartment where they can’t move around. When we have to work on the girls we just bring them a group at a time into a pen, rope them and tie them to a post. Now, when I say we rope them, I don’t mean we race up on horseback, throw a rope over them and drag them away. No, I mean we calmly walk up to one, gently place the rope over her and most times they will willingly go to the post. I have posted a video on our Back Valley Ranch facebook site to show how the procedure is done. Jerry and I had never watched a video of this until yesterday and we couldn’t help but laugh and how calm everyone was.

Despite our girls being so well behaved they have still learned some tricks of avoidance. Some will tuck their heads to their chin in a “don’t pick me” stance. My favourite though has to be when they kneel down. For example…Luxy did just that yesterday. As soon as the rope went around her she just kneeled to the ground. She refused to move, so we ended up just giving her her shot right there in the middle of the pen. Then there’s the pushing to the fence routine. You’ll get the rope on them and they don’t want to move. So we get right up behind them and have to push and shove and drive them to the fence. I seem to remember seeing other cattle that would just flip out as soon as a rope touched them. Ours just stand there like a lump and refuse to move. Not that our herd is perfect, we do have a few spunky ones. Those are usually the young ones. But as they get older, they learn the routine and realize that we are not there to hurt them.

I love ranching and I’ve always loved helping out other ranches. But I don’t think I would be able to do this on a full time basis  with wild cattle all the time. I like being able to walk among them and have them not fear me. Sometimes it’s a little difficult to move around when there’s some big butts in the way and they don’t feel it necessary to move just because you want them to. But I would rather have that then the latter. It’s quite humorous and we find ourselves laughing about it all the time.

So, Scour guard is done. The cows most ready to calve are in and the weather is snowy but warm. Let’s bring on the babies!