Bluffing cows

2010 was a good learning year for me. Like I’ve said before, Clayton was working nights, so during the week the brunt of responsibility for feeding the cows fell to me. I had some fun experiences and definitely grew in my skills and courage. I tagged 5 or 6 calves on my own, and each time was such a rush. Good times.

Enter 2011. I was pregnant (hooray!). Hence, I was somewhat limited in the things I could do to help with chores. I still carried water jugs when the horses’ water was frozen over, and fed the horses every morning, but I’d been doing that since before pregnancy and my body was used to it. Lifting 75lb hay bales, however, well, I don’t think my doctor would have approved. And Clayton and Joel wouldn’t have let me if I tried. My job was pretty intense: driving the truck. Yep, that’s right. I would back the truck up to the haystack, park it, and then . . . sit there while Clayton loads the hay. After the hay was loaded, I’d drive to the cow field and drive around while Clayton unloaded the hay. That is my normal job, even when I’m not pregnant, so I guess there’s no big change there. Let me tell you though, bumping around in the truck driving through the field when you’re 8 months pregnant feels a whole lot different than bumping around the truck when you’re not. It’s a wonder that my child wasn’t born with Shaken Baby Syndrome. Just kidding. I did crawl under a few barb wire fences, chasing calves, and I also assisted with three calf pullings. In fact, Clayton and Joel and some other family comedians would joke that when I went into labor, they would pull out the calf puller and chains and pull my baby out right there in the squeeze chute. When they made these hilarious jokes, I’d pretend to laugh, and then turn away so that they couldn’t see my entire body shudder. I definitely have some new-found sympathy for cows in labor, and especially for cows whose calf had to be pulled out.

And I’m sure I could have helped with some tagging and been just fine, but I decided to take it easy and let the boys do all the hard work. Clayton and Joseph had a “calf catcher”, which is basically just like a shepherd’s crook, that they would use to hook a calf on the leg, catch it, and tag it. It was a fairly effective way to catch the older calves that hadn’t yet been tagged, but after they had caught 3 or 4 calves on a Saturday morning, the herd was fairly riled up, convinced that the boys were torturing their babies. After that day, whenever they saw the calf catcher, the mamas would hurry off with their calves, nervous that another torture session was underway.

One day, after I’d been griping about how worthless I’d been feeling about not helping out more with the chores, Clayton tried to help me feel better. There was a new calf that needed tagging. Clayton said that he would hold the calf down for me, and all I had to do was slip the tag onto its ear. Piece of cake, right? We walk quietly over to the calf, who is laying a short distance away from where his mama and the rest of the herd are eating the hay that we’ve just delivered to them. Clayton quickly grabs the calf in a bear hug, feels between its legs to determine the gender (bull calves get tagged on the right ear, heifer calves on the left ear), and instructs me which ear to insert the tag. Now, if you’re imagining the calf calmly laying there while Clayton holds it, you’re imagining the wrong ranch. This calf wants to get away from scary old Clayton, and is thrashing about trying to get away, and crying for his mama. I can’t get a grip on his ear because he’s thrashing about so wildly. And hey, I’m 7 or 8 months pregnant. My usual bravado and boldness has been replaced by demure timidity to protect my unborn child. So I’m not being very brave, but am kind of waffling about, trying not very hard to get a hold of the ear of this very wiggly calf.

In the meantime . . . not only has the worried mama cow come over to protect her poor baby, but along with her comes about half of the herd, determined to help their own kind protect this innocent baby from the horrible humans. Picture this: Clayton, on the ground, wrestling wildly with the calf. Me, timidly standing to the side. And about 10 or 15 full-grown cows, surrounding us, mooing wildly, and making all kinds of threatening gestures at Clayton.

I wimp out even more, because I sure don’t want to get trampled by a bunch of crazed cows! And I don’t want the father of my unborn child to be killed on the ground in front of me, which seems to be about to happen. I yell to Clayton to just let the dang calf go, and he yells at me to hurry and tag the calf. I yell to Clayton that there’s no way I’m going to touch that dang calf because the cows will kill me if I do. He yells right back at me to hurry up and tag the calf. We’re yelling because the cows that are surrounding us are mooing really loud and if we didn’t yell, we couldn’t hear each other. We’re definitely not yelling because we’re angry. Right? After some strong “encouragement” from Clayton, I finally cowboy-up, dart in as quick as I can, grab the stupid ear of the stupid calf, and tag the dang thing. Then I chuck the tagging gun in Clayton’s direction, and take off at a quickstep for the safety of the truck.

Of course by this time I am crying, dang pregnancy hormones, and when Clayton catches up to me, unfazed from this seemingly life-threatening ordeal, he thinks I’m upset because he was yelling. In turn, I tell him that I thought he was going to be pulverized and that this is why I was so upset. He puts him arm around me and says, “Oh, there was nothing to be afraid of. Those cows are all bluff.”

That was bluffing? Boy, I’d hate to be around when the cows are telling the truth.

My cute and chubby pregnant self

My first solo tag

It was the winter/spring of 2010. Clayton worked late and didn’t get home until 9-10pm, so it was up to me to take care of feeding the cows. I’ve mentioned before that it’s a lot of work to feed on your own. But I’ll say it again. It’s a lot of work to feed on your own! Load the hay in the truck, watch out for skunks in the haystack, talk to the dogs while you’re driving to the field because there’s nobody else to talk to, open and close the gates, get out and throw a few bales off, get back in and drive a few yards, get out and throw a few bales off . . . you get the idea. It’s quite the task. But, like I said earlier, when the task falls to you, you do it. Because that’s responsibility. And I felt pretty cool back then. Nowadays, I’ve sadly lost some of my bravado, but that’s a story for another day. Maybe someday I’ll get my bravado back.

Back to the story. I was feeding the cows. Driving around the field, I noticed off in the distance that a newborn calf was curled up in the grass, patiently waiting for mama to return. “Here’s my big chance,” I thought. “I can tag this calf all by myself and then everyone will think I am so tough.” I finish feeding, park the truck a ways off, and of course, leave the dogs inside the cab. Don’t want no dogs chasing off the baby. I prepare a tag, load it in the tagging gun, and sneak up on the little fella. Now, I knew that the calf most likely wouldn’t just calmly lay there while I, a predator, came up and shoved this plastic tag through its ear. I knew I had to be sneaky, and I knew that I would have to hold the calf down. “Big deal,” I thought, “I’ve seen Clayton and the guys do it. I can totally handle this.” I pounced on the calf, and attempted to hold him down with one hand while holding the tagging gun with the other. I didn’t anticipate, however, that calves are big and strong. It’s not like handling a helpless tiny newborn kitten. Calves are born 50 pounds or so of precociousness, meaning they can stand up, walk, run, and suckle within an hour after being born. I don’t know exactly how old this new calf was, but he was strong enough to get away from me. I was about to lose my grip. The calf was thrashing around, trying to get away from his attacker, crying and bellering for his mama the whole time. I decided that drastic measures were necessary. I dropped the tagging gun on the ground, grabbed the calf with both hands, and then . . . I sat on him.

Well, he wouldn’t hold still! He was about to get away! I couldn’t confess to Clayton that I had almost tagged a calf and then let him get away! The shame! So, I sat on him. Straddled his little body between my knees, and then I put all of my 135 pounds on his measly 50 pounds and held that calf down. And I tagged him! All by myself! Let me tell you, during this whole time, my heart is seriously thumping. This is a huge adrenaline rush. The excitement of sneaking up on the calf before he runs away, trying to hold him down and then realizing that I couldn’t, sitting on the little bugger and then succeeding in tagging him, looking up and realizing that the mama cow is on her way to rescue her baby . . . Wait, what? The mama cow is on her way to rescue her baby? I am attacking her poor defenseless baby, and she is on her way to save him! I better get the heck out of here!

The mama, alerted that something was wrong by her baby’s cries for help, is seriously galloping towards me as fast as she can. Luckily for me, we were a pretty good distance away from where the herd was eating the hay that I so kindly delivered to them, so I had had plenty of time to wrestle with the calf and get the tag on before realizing that mama cow was on her way. She was still a good 20 or 30 yards away, but believe me, when you’re on the ground and you look up and see a cow running at you at full speed, your brain says, “Oh, crap.” I quickly got off the calf, ran to the truck and jumped inside. Safe and sound, just in the nick of time.

Tagging calves

Ahh, tagging calves. It can be so tricky. It can also be rather easy. If the calf is immobilized on a calf-table or in a squeeze chute, it's simple as pie. If the calf is older than a day or two old and is running free, it gets a lot harder to do on foot. Now if you have a good horse and a talent for roping, then that's a different story. Unfortunately, we are usually on foot when we are trying to tag, so we don't get the luxury of a roping horse to assist us.

An eartag is a way of identifying the calf and marking them as belonging to your ranch. You can get pre-printed tags with numbers on them like this:

You can even get all fancy and special order tags pre-printed with your ranch name and brand on the tag. Or you can buy blank tags and get special markers to write your own number and brand on them yourself. We usually go with this route, because it's cheaper and we can individualize them exactly how we want them. The number that you assign to each calf, well, I think every ranch has their own system of identification. Some assign the calf a number that correlates back to it's mother cow, while some assign just consecutive numbers. But what WE do for our numbering system looks like this: 1201--"12" being the year the calves were born, and "01" being the consecutive order that the calves were born. So this year, all of our calves will be tagged with first a "12" and then whatever number of calf they are in the order that they are born--from "01" to "26". Does that make sense?

The reason we tag the calves as soon as they are born is to mark them as belonging to us, in case any cattle rustlers come along and try to steal them. Also, it's helpful to us to tag the calves so that each day, as we are out feeding the cattle, we can see an unmarked baby and know that it is a new calf. Unfortunately, we don't have the manpower to tag each calf immediately after it's born, so while we try to tag as many of them as we can, there's a handful that get away and have to wait.

The eartag gun looks like this:

It's fairly similar to a human getting their ear pierced. You load the tag onto the gun, load the "earring back" onto the sharp point, place the gun onto the earlobe of the calf, and squeeze. Voila, you have a beautifully tagged calf.

As you can see, this calf was born in 2011 and was the 7th calf born that year.

Stay tuned for several adrenaline-pumping tagging stories!

Grandpa & the Rodeo Bulls

This is a favorite family story, and it's about a very special person. Grandpa Sagers. Unfortunately, Grandpa Sagers is no longer with us, but his impact on our lives is still felt today. I didn't know him extremely well, but Clayton and I always enjoyed spending the occasional night at Grandma & Grandpa's house, or going over for dinner. I loved hearing his stories about their mission in Africa, going to big band dances at Saltaire, and of course, his stories about the farm. Grandpa Sagers was very conscientious and hard-working when it came to the cows. He very rarely went on vacation because he was worried that something might happen to the cows while he was away. He farmed and took care of the cows until he had a series of strokes back in, oh, maybe 2004-ish? I don't remember the exact date. But he worked very hard every day until he was no longer able to do so. Grandpa was pretty tall, and apparently hit his head on various objects while working, so he went about doing his farm work wearing a hard hat, which protected his head from bumps and bruises. One of his young grandsons, when asked in school to draw a picture of a farmer, drew a picture of his Grandpa Sagers with his hard hat on. The teacher tried to inform the child that farmers don't wear hard hats, but the child insisted, "My Grandpa is a farmer and this is the kind of hat that he always wears!" He was very strong-willed and stubborn, which is a trait that was passed on to just about all of his many descendents. One of my ABSOLUTE favorite Grandpa Sagers stories took place when Grandpa was having an argument with Uncle Larry. It just makes me giggle every time I hear it. I'll have to share it with you some other time.

But the story I'd like to tell you today is the story of Grandpa and the rodeo bulls. Once upon a time, several rodeo bulls broke down some fences and got into our field, and started mingling with our cows. You've all seen a rodeo, right? Rodeo livestock is sometimes called "rough stock", which is pretty self-explanatory. Rough stock are rough, wild, and unpredictable. Grandpa rode out on his faithful steed, Trinket, to sort out the rodeo bulls and drive them back to where they belonged.

Here's Trinket in her later years. She was a tough little cow pony in her day.

Anyway, back to the story. Trinket and Grandpa were sorting out the bulls, when one of the bulls decided that he had had enough of them. The bull charged Trinket, and actually knocked her off her feet. Grandpa fell off the horse and was still on the ground when the bull decided to come after him. If you're on the ground, having recently been knocked off your horse and an angry bull comes after you, you're in no position to bargain. You're lucky if you can scramble to your feet quickly enough to try to run away before he gets ya.

As luck would have it, on this day Grandpa also had his trusty dog, Grizz, with him. Grizz saw what was happening, saw his master on the ground about to be trampled, and Grizz took charge. He ran at the bull before it could get to Grandpa, bit the bull on the nose, and held on until Grandpa could get up and get back to his horse. Grizz saved Grandpa's life, or at least saved him from some pretty severe injuries.

I don't have a picture of Grizz but I'm told that he looked a lot like this dog:

Thanks Grizz, for saving Grandpa!

And here's a picture of the man himself.

We love you, Grandpa Sagers!