Modern Cowboys Moving Cattle

is old hat to cattle farmers, and rounding them up for some is a far cry from what it used to be in the days of old. As I am new to this aspect of life, it has been a total learning curve for me to see how this ranch moves their cattle around. I always thought they saddled up the horses, got their lariats together and chased them down.

Guess I have been watching too many John Wayne movies or something...In today's world of cattle ranching, things are a little different, at least around here anyhow.....

As watching a movie is not a true picture most of the time of real life, what I gathered as a child watching them was this. The people who raised cattle in the olden days had to round em up and move em out. They would moved them from one place to another, either for grazing purposes or to take them to market to sell for food.....Sometimes they would move a whole herd of them across the country through thick brush, across rivers, through grassy plains and sometimes over mountain ranges to get them where they were going.

Their cattle dog was a great help to them as it was able to chase the strays which wandered out of the herd at a moments notice by the cattle hand.....Giving the dog a whistle, or a shout, the dog would run after the cow which had left the herd for whatever reason cows do this, no one really knows, they have cow brains which do not work like ours...or maybe they are trying to go back where they came from.....Most definitely when this happens, it is money running down the range and might get eaten by a predator instead of being raised for sale to be eaten by us.

A cattle hands job back then, and is still true now, is not an easy one. Not only do cows have a mind of their own but there are a million and one things which have to be done before a cow or a bull is ready to be sold. Cows, I have discovered are somewhat like dogs. They will follow the person who feeds them and takes care of them most....they seem to know at what time they will be fed and listen for the one who feeds them to open the gate. They sometimes come running for their food, but most of the time just amble on up to the feeding rough..

When it comes time to give them their shots, worm them, castrate, brand or cut their horns, they seem to know this also and they tend to hide in the brush or go along ways off the beaten track to avoid being poked, prodded, have needles stuck in them or otherwise bothered in non cow like fashion according to their silly cow brains and can be quite stubborn to get together and accomplish all these different things.

I do not know what happens on all ranches, or how they go about rounding up their cattle, I am supposing that a lot still use the horse method of roundup along with their faithful dogs...no cowboy can do without his helper; but here on this ranch it is an amazement to me how the cattle are rounded up---horses are not used at all for this purpose. And this was and is still truly amazing as to how they do do it. Of course, there is still the faithful companion of man and cowboy doing his work alongside the hand.

wormed and shotted, I asked the ranch hand if I could go along as they rounded them up. We all climbed in the John Deer Gator, the ranch hand and his son riding along in the back with the cow dog, who is very similar in color to the one I have pictured. Opening the gate, we proceeded to drive around the cows and get the moving, the dog staying in the back until his owner whistled and he jumped out, gathering together the ones who did not want to follow along.

They were put in the pen (and remember, I am not a cowgirl either....maybe a cowgirl in the sand, but not on a ranch) and then through the chute, wormed and shot with the medicines to keep the meat healthy and the cows from getting sick. Interestingly enough, the wormer is sprayed on the cows backs and is absorbed through the skin.

After this process was finished, some of them had to be marked with a tag in their ear and it was like watching someone getting their ear pierced only on a much larger scale with a special piercing gun and tag attached. Then a small bull had to be castrated. Finished with this process, the cows were again turned out into the pasture.

There are two large bulls here, one weighing almost 2000 lbs. yes. The figure is correct and a smaller one, who is not that small at all but weighs almost as much as the larger one. They had to be moved out of their pen and put out to pasture.....We all hopped back into the Gator and proceeded to chase the bulls through the field among the goats and over to the pasture they were to graze in. These bulls had been in their pen for a while and were totally happy to gain the freedom to roam about and graze.

But.....there always is a but...and butt they did. Halfway across the field, butting heads. They would not go to the new pasture. So, they were chased with the Gator and the dog let out of the truck to give them added incentive to move along to where they were supposed to go. The field (pasture) they were passing through contains a lot of goats and when the goats saw the bulls coming, they ran to the other side of the field.

To me, watching these huge animals butt heads was scary and naturally this caused a lot of laughter, especially when the Gator got close to the bulls....too close for my comfort, I wanted to jump out and run the other way, but having been told bulls go for movement, not color, I stayed put....and finally they were in the next pasture where they were supposed to be.

I am not sure at this point, with the rising cost of gas, why cowboys have gone to using mechanical things such as the Gator instead of a horse, but this is the way they do it here, and most likely on a lot of other ranches now too. Not being a verified ranch hand and watching all of this has been truly interesting to me......At least it took up a whole day of time when I had little else to do.....