Lynn's Cattle Drive and Millenium Branding

Two weeks ago we helped our neighbor, Lynn Meyers, move his cattle about 10 miles south to their summer range. We started at 5am and got all 450 pairs of cows and calves there by noon. Here's a picture from the back end of the procession showing how far they string out on the trail. Some of the leader cows were a mile ahead of the calves lagging behind here at the end. There were 11 of us on horseback, with some of us in the back pushing and some along the sides guiding the herd.



Dutch and I got a lot of miles together and both were pretty tired by the end of the day. On a 10 mile drive you probably cover at least 20 miles pushing the cattle and cutting stray cows and calves back in. After we arrived to the summer pasture we spent 2 hours pairing the cows and calves back up with eachother.



This is my boss, Alan, and his horse Rocky. We enjoy a change of pace working off horseback whenever we get the opportunity.

Here's a shot across one of the meadows on our ranch. We've had some wonderful rain showers that have greened our meadows and hills up better than they've been in the last 10 years. It's almost seemed like Michigan here for the last month:)

Another tail end shot. Speaking of cattle and horses, we helped our good friends Jeff and Tracey Keiser up at the Millenium Ranch brand two weekends ago. Darcy decided she wanted to do a roundup on horseback, so we left the house here about 5am and drove up north to their place. She rode one of Millenium's horses and our neighbor, Marlene Meyers, watched Daraby for the morning. We had a great time rounding up the cattle and taking part in the branding. Darcy organizes and refills all the vaccines and I took up my usual job wrestling calves (we forgot our camera but we do have pictures of other brandings in earlier posts). It was a great day and we always enjoy getting together with the neighbors at brandings. A lot of work is done in a short time during brandings (vaccinations, castrations, and the branding) and the food is guarenteed to be good when the work is done! We always like to get out and work on horseback too:)