MARATHON 2017

Yesterday we headed to the winter range with the Gonder herd.  It's a 20+ mile cattle drive.  For some reason these cows feel the need to run up the bench, over the mountain pass, down and across the other side.   I feel like they are running a marathon.  Of course we discourage this behavior.  It's too hard on the cows to run that far.  

The poor old girls ran up the bench and were already getting tired.  We stopped them for a breather before heading over the pass.

I may have been parked in the wrong place, and Clay may or may not have gotten annoyed with me.  

We recently hired a new cowboy.  Welcome to our team Orrin.

Notice the white patches on the cows.  This is a paint mark we made when we preg-checked them.  Dave is hoping to be able to spot them from the plane.

Clay stopped the herd at the top, we gave them a rest and had some lunch.  The next stop was my turn.  I waited for them at the gate.  

You can see how hard the cowboys are working.  

Coming down the bench.  Yep, I'm waiting at the gate.  I did a lot of truck chasing.

Clay counted them through the gate.  He counted 160.  Little did we know we should have had 163.  Kind of a big oops on our part for not knowing this information before we left.  We were out 3 cows.  The cows must have taken a wrong turn somewhere in the trees and will turn up at some point.

Headed across the hardpan.

Tired cows, but they are on the home stretch.

The water is through this gate.  They made it.  

This cow's name is David, yes named after Dave.  She had a hard day.  She developed a hitch in her get-a-long.  She will be glad to just rest and graze.  I promise there is feed beyond the hard pan.

The cowboys made it too. They even took advantage of this soft ground to do a little training.

Both boys were riding young horses.  It was a good day for some training.
The three of us did pretty well.  I really wish we hadn't lost three cows though.
​  We all keep learning.