The Idaho Rancher's Wife

The Ranch From the Wife's Perspective

A Day at the Blackfoot Team Penning & Branding

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I already told you how our day ended when we took the heifers to the team penning and branding, and as promised I have pictures of the day.  I have to tell you that I LOVED having my new camera!  Its amazing to be able to stop a rope mid-air or to get the dirt flying.  Mmmm…

When I was telling a friend what we on the summer weekends he couldn’t believe that when we have time off to play, all we do is sort and brand heifers.  Yep, we love being cowboys so much that its pretty much all we do!

Now if you’re wondering what a team penning and branding is, I’ll tell you.  The first event is the team sort.  They throw out 10 heifers (numbered 0-9) and the cowboys are given a number for the first heifer that they sort out first.  Once they find her, they find the rest in the sequence until the time runs out.

The penning is really similar.  Instead of finding the heifers in a sequence they have to find 3 heifers, all with the same number.  Then they push them to the other end where a pen is set up (hence the reason it is called penning…).

And the late (and probably my favorite to watch) is the team branding.  The teams have 4 heifers to head, heel, and brand (with pancake mix, of course).  There are 4 guys to a team, 2 to rope and 2 to do the branding.  They switch in the middle, so that everyone gets a turn to rope…  It wouldn’t be fair if they didn’t, now would it!

I’ll admit that sometimes it can get a little long, but there are some dang good horses that can make an awesome cut.  There are a few little bloopers along the way that always make it exciting.  They did a youth penning team that was so fun to watch.  These kids are on the way too be some stinking’ good cowboys (sadly I had my camera put away at this point…).  Then we end the day with some dang good ropers!  That certainly includes my cowboy, The Rancher… he got 2nd place!  Enough winnings to pay for supper, what more could a wife ask for!

Many Irons in the Fire

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Having 760 cows means that we have to find places for all of them, which means that we have groups spread out on the range.  Some of them are on our own private ground but a good majority of them run with other ranches on the Association rangeland.  And that means that when we go branding we have EVERYONE’s cattle to brand!

The upside to this is that we have plenty of help to brand our calves, but that comes with the price of going out every weekend to brand (but that’s a price we are so happy to pay).  It takes a LOT of time to get so many calves branded! 

The group that we run with has 7 different brands in the fire!  With so many different operations running together, we want to make sure that we get it right on branding day.  The ropers are limited to the ranch owners or other cowboy they designate.  The ropers have to be good at finding a mothered up pairs and recognizing which brand it will need.  Talk about pressure!

Not only do we need to make sure we get the right brand on the right calf, but each operation has its own vaccines and marks to do.  Each ranch sets up their branding station and is responsible for doing their own ground work.  If you want a job done right, I guess you do it yourself, right?  Actually there are a lot of the men that have run together for YEARs and YEARS that would do a fine job of doing work on each others cattle.  But for the sake of not confusing the help, we don’t do too much crossover.

Since we are trying to get as many done as possible we don’t use the Nord forks.  The time a roper would be tied up is time that he could be roping, which is precious.  So they drag in their calf, the ground crew pounces and mugs the calf.  They slide the rope off to send the roper back to rope and then they get to work.

When you write it out and explain it, it sounds crazy and a lot of work.  But after doing it for so long, its amazing how you just know what to do! 

 

 

Almost as Good as a Photo Shoot

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I love taking pictures on the ranch- that’s why I have this blog.  And branding time is one of my FAVORITE times to take pictures.  The gathering, roping, riding, and fun times together are just too awesome to not capture.  In fact, last weekend I took like 1,400 pictures!  Its almost like having my own cowboy photo shoot!

A lot of the pictures were duplicates (which have been deleted…) because I set my camera to burst mode to make sure that I don’t miss a thing.  And some don’t turn out, so its not like I have 1,400 picture to share.  But I do have a lot!  You’ve been warned, there are a lot of photos here… (like more than a hundred…)

 
Click “Read More” for the rest of the pictures!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
 

 

 

 

Breaking in New Horses

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Every cowboy has a good string of horses and this spring we have been working on ours.  We have two new mares that we have been working with.  Both of them have been pretty labor intensive but with time we have seen some great progress.

The sorrel (red) horse with a white blaze is Loca.  She is a baby from The Rancher’s mare when he was growing up.  If you know Spanish, you know that Loca means crazy.  She’s named that for a reason! For a couple of years now, The Rancher has been trying to work with her.  She’s about to turn 6 (or maybe 7… I’m not quite sure) and for that many years she has been a wild thing.  Too wild to really do anything with.  We haven’t really even been able to get a halter on her, let alone try anything with a saddle.

One day The Rancher was working with her and he had a rope around her neck.  She went to being crazy (like she doe)s and got the rope caught on the fence.  She hit the slack and it tightened up around her neck.  Being crazy already, she started working against the rope and before long it was tight enough that she passed out.  When she tipped over, the rope broke free and loosened up around her neck.  Slowly she got up and walked to The Rancher.  It was like she was a completely new horse! And ever since that day, she has been a gem to work with.

The Rancher has been a little weary of her, knowing how she used to be a little crazy.  But every time he has worked with her its like she has done it hundreds of times.  Now all we need is to get a little experience on her and she is good to go!

Our other new horse is Sugar.  We bought her from a family that had a few horses and other animals, but they really didn’t have the time to work with her.  When we called to tell them we were on our way (it was a few hours to get there) they said, “Are you good with horses?  I don’t think that she has ever been loaded in a trailer…”. Oh boy that was a great start!

Don’t worry, she practically loaded herself!  The next day we saddled her up to see what kind of skills she had.  After only a few minutes The Rancher said, “Well… she has no manners, no steering, and no gas.” I guess that left only room for progress!   And boy have we made some progress-  we can actually get into a good lope and move left and right.  Its still rough, but with time she is going to be a great little pony!

 

About Me

Hello! I'm Allison, The Rancher's Wife! There's nothing I love more than being out on the ranch with my husband and kids. Join me for a look at what goes on here at the ranch and the life being a rancher's wife!

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