THE BIG BOYS

We have spent a couple days getting the bulls out of our cow herds.  Some ranchers choose to keep their bulls in year round.  We control birth dates of calves by taking the bulls out by a certain date each year. 

They are some big boys and frankly, I am a little nervous around them.  I had to go get this big boy who was off alone in the corner.  If you could hear the scary noise he was making.  Makes me shudder..  

You can see by the ears on my horse, Josie, that she wasn't going to take any crap from him.

When they get with their "friends", they tend to fight.  If they do that look out, they will plow over anything in their way.  So I was giving these boys some space.

It is best to take several cows, or all of the cows with the bulls to avoid a lot of chasing.

A horse in front of Clay splashed mud crossing the water. I made Clay let me take a picture.  He had already wiped most of it off his face..  He didn't think it was as funny as I did.

We take the bulls to a corral where they can be loaded onto a truck or into a horse trailer.

It is important to be very careful around the bulls.  And quick. (notice I am outside of the corral.)

We had several different pastures to gather from.  This is at Lad's,South of Garrison.  It is so pretty there. I always have to take a few pictures.

The cows all gathered toward us.  I think they wanted the grass on the other side. I am not sure it looks any greener over there. 

You can see the number on the right shoulder of the bull.  It indicates the year. 2014 on this guy.  This way we know when to sell them.  For example this year we will sell the ones with a 3 on them.

Wait a minute, those don't look like cows to me.. haha  Apparently the neighbor has some escapees.  They think they are cows.

We went from nice green meadow to......

Oh my Heck!!! 
See ghost rider Clay in there?

I had no idea what I was taking pictures of.  I was just snapping away while my poor horse was fighting off the swarms of flies that were coming off the cows.  This is part of the glamorous life of cowboying.

The dust does make for some pretty cool pictures.

We got to the corral where we could sort out the bulls

There were 24 bulls in this bunch of cows.  Dave puts about 1 bull per 30 cows, depending on conditions.  So you do the math.  

We loaded these bulls onto the truck to head back to Baker where we will sort out the sellers and the ones that will stay at Silver Creek until next spring.

Clay is much more brave than I am.

They really are big.

Dave is letting them out of the truck. Brave guy getting in there with them.

Have a good winter big fellas. 

They will be happy here until they are needed again.