Nuts and Bulls

Another interesting day on the Ranch.

When I woke up this morning the sky appeared as though it was slowly becoming a lovely shade of grey...but it held off for quite some time. I did the ususal and started chores, people slowly trickled in and we got them done pretty quick. Today was bull moving day- and that is exactly what happened.

After chores Dean and I saddled up Merle, Adrienne, Dean, Ross and I (with Nelly and Andy and Ross's four wheeler) loaded up and headed down to Dicks (the other place down the road) to meet Lee and take on the task at hand. We all had some pretty good timing and got there at about hte exact same time he did. First, we pulled in one bull that needed to be sorted off and loaded him up. The rest of the herd was up to us. There were supposed to be 28 in the pasture total...we left one that was stifiled and loaded one up, which left 26 for us to find. Yet, we only found 19 after rounding up in the bull pasture...which means we are missing a few. But, apparently we are only missing four according to Merle - I don't understand that, but I'm sure he knows what he's talking about!

After we got everybody (or what we thought was close enough to everybody) rounded up and out the gate the games began. With Ross ahead of the three of us on a four wheeler we never had to worry about opening gates- that was super nice. We had to go through the red cow pasture for a bit and leave five red bulls there. This wasn't too bad considering we had 19 all together- but they did manage to start one big huge ridiculous fight there. Usually there are any two bulls fighting pretty much constantly but this was just the whole shabang...all the boys were pissed! But, they got over themselves after some pretty serious growling by me and some rope throwing by Lee- and we moved on. We had a minor difficulty because we only let four bulls go with the cows we saw and kept on in hopes of seeing another group to put him with. We got all the was to the far end of the pasture and finally saw 6 cows..only 6! But that was better than none, so we sent the last one that way. After crossing a few more pastures we had made it to the road and stopped to give them a chance to drink. Merle and Adrienne met us there with the pickup and brought some pop. The whole time we were moving bulls they were hauling others out.

After a quick break Lee and Dean and I sorted off the reds from the blacks and headed back out towards home with the red bulls and Ross ahead of us again. We got home pretty easily and sent them to the corral to get loaded out after dinner. We loosened our cinches and headed in for some steak! After eating too much, we went back at it. Merle and Adrienne hauled the red bulls out in different directions while the rest of us rounded up the black bulls from the smaller pature we left them in and headed toward the black cows. It was a long and extremely windy treck out there- but we made it. At one point we had a bull the waded into the creek and wouldnt' come out so I just headed into the water with Nelly...but when by boots got wet she decided that was deep enough so we spent some time yelling at the idiot from across the creek...he eventually gave up and got out! It was pretty funny!

We made it there with the black bulls and started down towards the creek with a few of them to find the cows. As we are doing this we can all tell that Ross is getting nervous about he weather (you could definitly see some nasty clouds rolling in). So, after trying to get us to stop pushing them and just leave he turns and looks at me from his four wheeler and says "Shut the gate behind you, I'm going home." And he left...it was hillarious! So I got them down the creek and the other two pushed some young bulls over the hill and we shut the gate and headed for home. We played our cards right and rode slow back to the trailer (which was at about the halfway point) this way we didn't get hailed our rained on. When we got back we loaded some high strung newer, younger bulls into the trailer with horses and did chores. It was an early night - like 4:30 and the wind was howling like crazy- but I didn't want to quit so early so I went up and finished sweeping out the shop with the doors closed. After dusting/humidifying myself to death (but finishing the one stall of the shed) I called it quits and went home. Right after I pulled the pickup and my car onto the lawn by some trees and went inside it started to rain and hail- guess the timing worked out well.

I think the worst of the nasty weather has gone by now but it sure has been windy and still is. I don't even care anymore because I'm going to bed:)

"So, if anatomy is destiny than testosterone is doom." -Al Goldstein