Gettin’ Dirty

by Hannah Higgins

Ever stick your hand up a cows butt? Have you ever had to spray yourself off with a hose because you are covered from head to toe in cow shit? I have, when preg-checking cows, and it is just one of the many things I do for my job. I work on my family ranch and I have a lot of different roles when working. Some of the roles a ranch hand fills are being a stand-in vet, a fencer, a member of the hay crew, and a cattle worker.

As a ranch hand you sometimes have to act like a vet. For example, when preg-checking heifers you have to lubricate your arm and then slide it into the cow’s anus and maneuver through the cow shit and soft tissue until you can reach down into the cow’s uterus. You then can gently feel around until you find a fetus, or lack of fetus. We do this once a year so we can sell cows that are not pregnant because they are not going to make us any profit on the ranch.

Another job we have is preforming C-sections. We once had a cow that got the name Big Mama when she was pregnant because her belly was so big that she could hardly walk. We figured she was having twins because of her size but after my dad gave her a C-section we discovered that she just had one enormous black calf that weighed about 190 pounds, over one hundred more pounds than the average calf weight. There was another instance when we had a cow that was in labor for over 4 hours and still didn’t have the calf’s front feet showing my grandfather had to do a C-section to get the calf out but when he opened her up he found that she had twins. The first calf that he pulled out had a head the size of two basketballs and both calves were born dead. Neither my dad nor my grandfather has a veterinarian degree but they have had to be stand-in vets.

Fixing fence is one of the jobs that I must do regularly. The fence may need to be fixed because it is old and run down or because cattle break it. We once took in some yearlings that ended up being wild and they got spooked one night and ran through two fences. When we tried to put them back in the right pasture they went crazy and ran through three more fences. The cattle barreled through five fences in the matter of twenty-four hours and it took us a week to fix them all.

One time in the summer when I was moving cows I noticed a broken fence, or more like a lack of fence. Almost seventy yards of fence was just completely missing, and the fence that was there was a black color and felt as if it was covered in soot. The fence had been struck by lightning and appeared to have disintegrated when hit. The wire left over was so pliable that I could bend it into any shape. Wire that pliable wouldn’t make a quality fence so I started walking to find where the flimsy wire ended and the good wire started. I walked another fifty yards before finding wire that could be used. We ended up having to replace about 125 yards of electric fence. Seeing wire that had been struck by lightning was a new sight for me, so fencing was actually interesting.

Another job that a hired hand does is haying. This usually takes about one month and includes bailing up mowed hay and creating bails. I have been on the hay crew since I was twelve and have been running the rake tractor the entire time. Raking means being out on the meadows as soon as the sun is up and staying out there at least until the sun is down and sometimes longer. Most of the days we don’t even stop for lunch we just eat and drive at the same time. There is a lot of responsibility that comes with haying. We are in charge of large tractors with a large rake on the back. Breaking anything on the tractor can result in an expensive replacement or a loss of progress.

Two years ago I was raking in a meadow about two miles from our house and I drove the tractor into this small circular cut between two swampy areas. My left rake wheel was about to drop in the water so I started cranking on my steering wheel and pulling the rake together with the lever. I discovered that doing both at the same time is a bad idea because the next thing I know my left rake wheel had gotten wedged between the ground and my tractor steps. I slammed on the clutch and called my uncle, Casey, because I didn’t know how to fix this problem.

After I told him what I did he replied in a disgruntled voice, “That’s alright, just come hop in the bailer and keep bailing for me while I fix it. There looks like there is a storm coming so we need to get as much done as possible.”

I hopped out and walked to the bailer, and was going for about fifteen minutes before I noticed that I had gotten the bailer plugged.

Casey comes running over after getting my wheel out from under the steps and I can see the irate expression on his face. “DAMN, I LEFT YOU FOR BARELY FIFTEEN MINUTES!” After he screamed, he calmed down and got right to work without adding another word.

We had to disassemble the bottom of the bailer and cut the hay that was wrapped around the pick up head and then put the bailer back together. By the time we finished, Casey had just enough time to bail up the hay that was previously raked before it started to rain. We headed for home in deafening silence and I knew that I had just set us back at least two days. A day like that make the hay season longer than it should be.  

Cattle work is the main job of a ranch hand and involves a lot. The cattle will need to be moved at least once a week and taken Purina tubs at least twice a week. On our ranch we have about two thousand head of cattle so you can expect to move or feed something almost everyday of the week in the summer.

If it is between April and June then we are in our calving season, which means three times a days somebody has to check our two groups of cows and one group of heifers to tag calves. These checking trips could take thirty minutes, two and a half hours, or more depending on how many you tag. If the cow is taking too long to have her calf or if the front feet aren’t the first body part showing then the calf will have to have be pulled. This involves putting a rope on the front feet and physically pulling the calf out the mother. If this is done correctly, and in time then the calf will be born healthy.

This past May I went out checking with my dad on a Sunday night before school.

“Hannah, come with me to check the heifers. It won’t take more than thirty minutes, I was just out there.”

We went out there and the cow that was calving when dad was out there still hadn’t had the calf so we decided we would have to pull it. We were chasing her on the four-wheeler, trying to rope her and I ended up running her through a three-wire barbed wire fence. Once I got her back in the pasture my dad got her roped and then he was able to tie the ropes on the calf’s feet and pull him out. We had to wait for the cow to clean off the calf and then head back to the house to get fencing supplies. A trip that was supposed to be a short thirty-minute trip ended up taking about three and a half hours. This is a normal delay in the life of a ranch hand.

Although some of the time my job can be very boring and can consist of a lot of early mornings, I am glad I have a job where I am doing different things each day. Waking up and not knowing whether you are going to be fencing, being a stand in vet, haying, or doing normal cattle work allows for variety and makes the job more enjoyable.