Preg Checking

We pregnancy checked (pregged, preg checked) one bunch of my uncles cows last weekend. Pregnant cows are "bred," and non-pregnant cows are "open."
First they gathered the cows and calves, and sorted. This was also weaning day for this bunch. The calves can be seen in the far pen, and will stay there until they no longer miss their mothers.

We preg check to eliminate any cows that aren't pregnant in our herds each year. There are several reasons to get rid of cows who aren't going to calve the following spring. Economics is a big one. It costs money to feed, vaccinate, transport and care for a cow and her calf year-round. An open cow can be replaced with one who will raise a calf for you, and calves are how you pay for the expenses.
Where I'm from the rule of thumb is it takes 7 years to pay for a cow, then everything she produces for you after you've had her in production 7 years is profit. Everything up until that point pays for the costs you incurred getting her grown up, bred and those annual expenses I mentioned. If you have to sell her much before she is 7, you will lose money. If you sell her when she over 7, whatever she brings is profit. Cows typically make it 10 years where I'm from, so the margin of income isn't really high...we want our cows to be bred!
Another reason to get rid of open cows is that if she doesn't have a calf for a year some people (myself included) believe she loses a lot of her mothering ability.
So if you keep her another year and she has a calf, you have double the money in her to get that calf, and she may not like it because she hasn't been a mother for so long. This could result in the calf dying, or being scrawny.
There are also sexually transmitted diseases in cattle, and one of the main symptoms for these diseases are cows who abort their calves early (which you wouldn't notice, except she wouldn't be pregnant in the fall) or cows who simply don't breed.
Getting rid of any open cows significantly reduces the risk of these sexually transmitted diseases infecting your herd, and pretty much eliminates the chance of some of them occurring.
There are other reasons for preg-checking, and they vary from operation to operation, but those are the two biggest ones- Economics and a means of preventing disease in your herd.
I personally feel it's an important management decision and I disagree with those people who don't get rid of their open cows, either through preg-checking and selling them in the fall, or selling them the following spring when they don't have a calf, and before the bulls are turned in.


Here's what we did. First we maneuvered the vet's hydraulic chute into place. Using a hydraulic chute makes it easier to handle the animals and isn't as hard on the people running the chute.



Here is the setup. Please note the camera bag. I put it there for a specific story I will tell in another post. My job was moving cattle up this alleyway to the chute to be pregged.
Those cement blocks hanging there are for the gate at the end of the alley that can be seen in the above and below pictures. The gate is weighted, and you can just barely pull on it and it will go up or down.
When I was very little my job was to close this gate when the cows went in the alley. My grandpa was in the back in those days, and I took my job very seriously and enjoy the memory now.



Here's the other side of the alleyway in the previous picture. Cows come down a large alley, around a 90-degree corner, and into a single-file alleyway. My cousin was in the back and can be seen loading the alleyway I was in charge of. I mentioned being "in the back," and that refers to the the position he has. He's in back of the alley for the day.



The gate...This gate prevents cows in front of it from back up the alley and either getting out or smashing the cows behind them. It is almost perfectly balanced, and the cows know to bump it, which will cause it to swing up like the photo below.


Then they walk forward, and ideally the gate hangs like it is here. If she backs up it is low enough that her tailhead will catch it and cause it to swing down, preventing her from getting out. This gate is the key to this alley, and keeps everything moving efficiently.


It's also scary. I've seen my dad get his head caught between the wooden poles and the top horizontal pipe when a cow backed up. My uncle jerked it down and drug my dad out. You want to watch how you handle it and keep your neck, fingers and everything out of the path between the top horizontal pipe and the wooden pole.



Here's the alleyway full, and the gate partially up as a cow goes under it.


Then they enter the chute, and the vet "Doc" performs the rectal pregnancy check. He will loudly yell "PREGNANT" or "OPEN" after he checks each cow. He wear's a plastic sleeve on his arm and washes after every cow. If a cow is open, he dunks a big "O" (for open) in his bucket of bright white paint, and puts an "O" on either side of the cow's back so she is easily identifiable. He also has a big "P" and can put that on cows too.
We sort off any cows that are over a certain age and sell them because as they age they wear their teeth out and have a harder time staying in good condition through the colder months. The old cows all get an O or a P to help sort them at the salebarn. The cows we are keeping that are pregnant don't get any mark.



Cows also get poured with a pesticide that will kill any bugs, like lice or worms, that they may have. This is called a spray gun, and it's attached to a plastic bottle filled with the pesticide. The gun measures a set amount of the liquid, then someone sprays it down the back of each cow. She absorbs it through her skin and it kills a variety of pests if any are in her.


Cows are also given a shot to prevent them from getting any respiratory diseases over the winter. Pregging is a chance to do a variety of other health-related things to cows in the fall. It's all about efficiency, and we try to run the cows down the alleyway and through the chute as little as possible. This is because it takes time, and why not do it all at once while the cows, vet and working crew are all present.


After all that the cow exits the chute and heads back up the corral. You can see the vet's plastic sleeve in this picture. He also wears full-body coveralls, and they can get messy.
After all the cows had been run through we either haul or trail them to their winter pasture.

2010 Wyoming State Fair

Last week was the Wyoming State Fair. I spent about 8 years competing at the state fair, but hadn't been back for a couple years. It was a different experience toting a camera bag instead of leading steers, scrambling from one end of the fairgrounds to the other to take pictures instead of camping out on the show boxes in the beef barn, or wandering through the huge livestock barns instead of navigating the maze of combined buildings that housed animals when I was there. FYI I liked the old beef barn better!
The kids are different too. I do not remember so much..skin at state fair when I was competing. There was a pretty strict n0-shorts policy in our county as I recall, but this year I saw about half the girls wandering around in shorts and flip flops.

But some things are the same, like how cute the little kids are...and the enormous citrus inspired drinks you can get on the midway for an exorbitant fee.

The horse show was never that exciting to me. But this little girl and I assume her brother are too cute. I also caught the little bitty kids pole bending and it was great!
Some of the kids that do compete can do some incredible things with their horses...

This girl was one of them, and she had a big grin the whole time. Obviously good at it and enjoying it all at once!

This girl was experiencing her first state fair and was a cutie. The pig people humor me with their variety of colorful muck boots. The pigs humor me because they have so much personality...I'm easily humored.

Sheep....well...it's an art, and a gift to be able to put up with, feed and show sheep in my opinion. I had to do it in college and it wasn't as bad as I thought...but it wasn't incredibly great either.

Judging of most clothing, photography, leather craft, cake decorating, cooking etc... was done Monday.

This is maybe my favorite. My mom said this could be me.

The fitting contest was interesting. I've never watched one before and have some friends that are into showing cattle and do this for a living. They have some skills.

The livestock judging contest...possibly the most nerve wracking morning of my State Fair career...that or showmanship. They are practicing their reasons on the bleachers.

You could fish!!! If you were under 12...

Team roping...makes nice pictures if you don't fall asleep watching.

Crabtree Carnival has been a State Fair staple for as long as I can remember.

Keeping things clean..

The judging contest isn't just nerve wracking for the human contestants.

Almost all of these pictures were in a center spread in the Roundup this week. I was so excited about the spread, and I had a lot of fun taking them and getting back in the State Fair groove. Following three days of taking pictures and attending meetings I collapsed for 12 hours and realized I am not 15 anymore :(

Going to the forest

Going to the forest means a lot of different things depending on who you talk to. For livestock people it typically means they are taking their cattle to a summer forest lease. As is the case with all public lands, livestock producers are the only ones who pay a fee to use the land. Forest leases are based on number of head and/or number of acres. Grazing forest lands reduces standing forages and therefore reduces the risk of fire. Sheep and cattle are a natural form of weed control, their hooves break up packed soils and improve plant germination and they convert a product that is unusable to humans (grass) into a product that feeds people (meat)


I was able to go with my dad to help haul a neighbors cattle to the forest Monday. This trip was postponed for three weeks due to all the rain this spring but nobody was complaining. First the cattle are gathered into the corral.

The cows are sorted off from the calves so they don't hurt their babies during the drive. If they were all mixed the 1300 pound cows could easily injure their 400 pound babies. Everything is inspected and counted by a brand inspector to ensure ownership and headcount prior to being loaded on large trailers called cattle pots. It is required by law to have cattle inspected by a brand inspector if they are traveling outside the county the producer lives in.

From left to right there is a truck driver, the brand inspector, the owner of the cattle and my dad (another truck driver). Inside the cattle pot are pens and a specific number of cows or calves are loaded into each pen. Separating the pot into pens allows for a more even distribution of weight, maximizes the use of the space and reduces the chance of injury. One great thing about where I'm from is the sense of community. We have known the family and used to have share cattle with them. They were running a little behind so we jumped in and sorted the first truckload for them while they brought the remaining cattle in the corral. Working together makes it work more times than not in agriculture.

After the last cow is loaded the door is closed (it drops from above) and we're off. Trucks can only haul so much weight per axle. My dads cattle pot is 53 feet long with two axles and I don't know how much total weight he can haul, but it's somewhere between 35,000 and 50,000 pounds.

We started on the Cheyenne River and hauled the cattle just over 70 miles

We ended in the Black Hills, just into South Dakota, northwest of Newcastle Wyoming. Arguably some of the prettiest country in the nation.


Here is a triple axle trailer backing up to the unloading dock.

Here comes the owner with horses and the extra cows that wouldn't fit on the cattle pots. This is the position I'm typically in, so being on the truck driver side was interesting. The owner, his daughter and a day helper also have horses to move their cattle from these main corrals to his specific pastures on the forest lease.

The cows trail off the cattle pot. After a cow has been hauled a few times she understands the routine and most load and unload with little trouble (Most does not mean all by any means)

The cows are joined by their calves moments later.

Everyone is turned out in a small grass pasture (known as a lot) to mother ( or pair) up. If a mother cow and her calf don't find each other they will return to the last place they saw their baby. Since they were hauled on a truck they wouldn't go all the way home, but they would return to these corrals and moo and moo until they found each other. This instinct is how cattle find each other if they're separated. If they are all paired up when you leave then it typically prevents a wreck and re-gathering on down the line.

Now the owner and his help are trailing the cattle to their pasture and doing any sorting that needs finished up. As part of the truck driving crew we...I mean my dad..is cleaning out his cattle pot. Livestock producers want a clean truck because a dirty truck makes their cattle dirty and can spread disease. It's also just a common form of courtesy to show up with a clean truck.
My dad and uncle have made truck drivers go clean their trucks before they would load them before. Here my dad is brooming out his truck. He will broom out as much manure as possible, then rinse the truck out with a hose later. As you can see the amount of water in the manure makes is a fairly simple task.


The cows settle in and enjoy their summer home. In the fall this entire process will be repeated and they will be hauled home. It snows too much in the winter to leave cattle on the forest.

Wordless Wednesday X4

Being wordless is a difficult thing for me. Please enjoy it while it lasts.