This was the sky at the end of the day yesterday, like another kingdom just over the horizon.  Like being handed desert at the end of the meal.

We gathered all the Beefmasters and brought them into the corral and sorted the calves and turned everything back out on separate sides of the fence.  The wind kicked up and blew dust into every pore of our bodies, and we felt it  especially in our eyes.  Everyone looked like clowns.  Working on the ranch is all about working together, teamwork, everyone moving in anticipation of what the animals will do, as one person.  Its fun to see the young people on the ranch, now with one herd under their belt, understand what is going on, and how it flowed so much smoother, and with less words.  Still Stuart said, as we were sorting on horseback, during a break, ok guys,  I need some pointers, let me know.  

Another splendid day on the Chico.

Birds have winter territories too.  Sometimes carefull observation will reveal a territorial battle between two birds of the same species.  When the birds are raptors, their talons do the talking.  As I stood silently watching a Northern Harrier work the east side of the Upper Twin Pond cattail marsh, the bird's route would pass right over my head.  When the harrier flew withing range,  I started capturing six images a second.  The bird was so close it wouldn't fit in the camera's field of view.  All of a sudden another Northern Harrier appeared on my view screen and both birds rolled to present their talons towards the territorial intruder.  The location where  I was standing probably represented the boundary of two winter Norther Harrier territories.  After less than a second, one bird flew to the north from where it came and the other bird flew to the south.

 Today was a grand day.  Everyone work together as if cogs in a wheel, turning a giant axle together in one motion.  We ran 1,027 head of cows through the chutes where i pregchecked them, Kathleen, gave them a vibrio/lepto shot, and Catherine wrote down what class the fit in: black, red, old, horns, ear.  We shorted them into colored and blacks, in preparation for selling them next early summer if rains do not come.  We have just enough grass to get them all through the winter, but no more. As a black herd of cattle, they will be more liquid if and when the time comes to sell.

i was  to busy to take photos this morning, but this photo is of the morning before when the cows were headed to water outside the corrals in the prelight hours.  tomorrow, we will probably ride under a similar sky...all the past mornings have been spectacular, and gather the herds that are bred, and walk them out to their winter pastures where they will some day lay down and calve, raise it over the course of the spring and summer, and a year from now, bring their calves back to the corrals where we'll go through this whole event once again.

Steer calves in the waiting room

We forward contracted the greater part of our steer calves a few months ago on a video auction.  As a part of our contract we are obligated to  give the steers a set of vacinations upon weaning one month before they ship.  After we finished up the last of the weaning yesterday morning we started in on the process.

Everyone is getting in on the action keeping these young steers vaccinated and moving.  These young calves are not only just figuring out about life without mom, but also learning about corrals, gates, alley ways and chutes for the first time.  With a little quiet patience it is really amazing how quickly they get it all figured out.  

Steer calves headed onto the scales to establish a base weight.  We have a target we need to meet on our shipping date one month from now.

Jonathan and Nick headed back for another group while weighing calves yesterday.

We bought saddle trees almost a year ago to build saddles for our first time and haven't gotten to it.  I know that once i start, I will want to go till i finnish, and with all the cattle work we're in the midst of, i think i will wait.  Above is the leather room where we repair our gear, and make things out of leather.  Over the last couple of years, its become the place where we get together to have meetings, talk, hang out. Its a nice place with all the leather rolled up on shelves, barrels full of scrapes, tools every where, one for every job.  We have nice speakers too for music.  But perhaps its just the smell of leather that pulls us in.  Or it could be the mojo, from the collection of "ranch things" hanging from the ceiling.  I'll post a photo next time.

  We were trotting out just as the frost started to fade this morning, two crews headed to opposite ends of the ranch, continuing to bring the cattle closer to home.  Duke's crew took the long trot south.  They were able to combine cattle from five different pastures into one heard and trail them half way back to headquarters.  
My crew  trailed the big Sand herd the rest of the way to the South Wolf, which we are using as a staging pasture next to HQ.  No  run back calves today, just a lot of pairs for a four man crew.  We finished in time to retrieve a few strays that had slipped through an electric fence over in Straw Gulch.  Unlike yesterday when we trotted home in the dark we were all home by four pm.  A truly beautiful day and a good ending to a productive week.

Merilin is a small falcon only slightly larger than its more familiar relative, American Kestrel.  It was once called Pigeon Hawk for its preying on pigeons in parts of its range.  The second part of its scientific name, Falco columabarius, is also a reference to pigeons. It is a circumboreal species and in North America it is confined to boreal forests during the  summer.  An exception is the prairie Merlin, the one that winters on the Colorado prairies and the one that is wintering by Rose Pond.  The prairie Merlin is expanding its range taking advantage of planted trees in city parks in the north prairie states and provinces. In parts of their range they focus on hunting waxwings but they will chase down any bird from the size of a flicker or smaller.  

Merlin comes from the French word,  esmerillon, the Old French name for this species.  In Medieval Europe, Merlins became popular as a “lady’s hawk” and they were used in "ringing flights" directed at the European bird, Skylark.  Catherine the Great and Mary Queen of Scots were both enthusiasts of this falconry sport and although the sport is still popular in Great Britain, there is now public pressure to stop it. Although small, Merlins can chase down their quarry flying at speeds up to 50 mph.

Back in August I talked about a range monitoring workshop that we hosted here on the Chico, put on by Charlie Orchard of Land EKG. Today Nick and I implemented some of those range monitoring techniques by identifying and recording data from two transect sites out east. We also installed semi-permanent grazing cages at both sites which will show us what that particular area would look like if we didn't graze it for a year. Monitoring the land from year to year enables us to track improvements over a long period of time while helping us make better management decisions in the short run. Below is a picture of one of the cages we built, covering a small peice of ground which is representitive of the pasture.

Last night on the way in we say a kit fox, just a tad bigger than a big house cat.  Janet says she sees him most the time when she comes by this spot.  Its stands there with perky ears, looking at us.  Then he sits down.  We've been seeing them everywhere.  The Division of Wildlife put cameras out a while back and recorded a large number of them.  I think this means that we are doing some thing right in how we are managing the ranch.

Everyone is back and on hand after the holiday.  The snow is melting fast, the cattle recovering slowly, but hit pretty hard by the snow and cold temps.  Next Tuesday, we begin gathering the entire ranch into one big herd that we'll bring into the corrals to strip the calves one way and the cows another.  We'll then, separate the steers from the heifers, and a few days later, palpate the cows to see if they are in calf.  This is the time of the year that we see how well the cattle bred last summer, and how much weight the calves gave gained.  We then ship all the steers to the buyer, who bought them on Superior Auction in November, ship the non bred cows to the sale, and take the bred cows and heifers to their winter ranges.  i can't wait to get going.