Today

What a nice day we had today! Must have approached 40 above with light winds. When I went and did some feeding this morning, I saw another couple bucks that eluded the hunters. You might have to look close to see the buck in the first picture.

We are giving the cows some of the alfalfa that I have been hauling lately. We are feeding it in place of the cow cake we normally feed to them. (That is because of the price of cow cake.) It is nice hay, and they slick up the spot that they hay was on down to nothing. I threw a couple scenery pictures in just for the heck of it.

Contented Cattle

Here are a few photos of our late calving cows, on winter range. They will begin calving around the 25th of April, and so far all they owe us this fall is grass and some salt. I imagine sometime in Feb., we may start giving them a little cow cake to go with the grazing. If we don't get a bunch of snow, they should have nearly enough grass to get through the winter without supplementing them with hay. That is our goal anyway.

Take a ride with me.

Thought I would show some of you what it looks like to sit in the "drivers seat" while you are driving horses. It got so nice late yesterday that we took them out again. I think I will use them to feed calves one of these days.

The others photos are cows on fresh grass, and my daughters favorite cat doing what cats do best.

A nice winter's day.

Today is quite the winter's day here. It is not the warmest day we have ever had here, but real nice nonetheless. We have virtually no snow, and it is around 40 degrees at noon. It is a bit breezy, but hey, it can be a lot worse. We are not unfamiliar with open winters here, but on other hand we can get some tough winters once in a while, with lots of snow and wind.

I went out this morning to open a gate and let one bunch of cows into another rougher pasture. It has good shelter, and also lots of grass this year. The pasture should run the cows a long time, unless we get too much snow, and it covers up the grass. When we start feeding cake to those cows, I usually end up sitting and waiting for them a while as they sure can get scattered out. We happen to have a couple highpoints on our ranch that give a great vantage point of the surrounding country. One of them is in this pasture. When I am waiting for the cows to gather up, I am always amazed at what a beautiful view I have from up there. To the south, I can see Terry Peak, located in the Black Hills, and it is close to 70 miles in the distance. Looking to the west, the Short Pine Hills and Lone Mountain loom up nearby, and I can see parts of the Long Pine Hills, and the Sheep Mountains in Montana. Also the Jumpoff (you can see it in my first picture), is full of badlands and mud buttes, and lay just to the NW of here. To the North, I can see the Cave Hills and the prairie below, and to the East the Slim Buttes run a long ways from N. to S. All of these hills have pines, hardwoods, and other various scenery. And to cap things off, most of the prairie below has scattered mud buttes, that poke up like many loose haystacks on the range.

Once in a while you have to count your blessings, and it is always easy to appreciate life when you are in a scenic location and have plenty of time to soak things up.

Welfare cases, and and old mower.

When I was out checking water, the cows were thinking it was time for them to get a handout. But no such luck. They will have to wait a while for a bite of cake if the snow holds off. They are wintering very well so far on grass, salt, and fresh water. This bunch will be moved to fresh pasture soon, but they are doing great where they are at.

The old mower in the lower picture is a remnant from earlier owners of this ranch. It has always made me think I should do something with it, but so far all I have done is look. It probably will stay that way. I need to get the dates off the pictures, as they are wrong.