the last weekend of autumn

Lucy works a lame bull from the 10,000-acre highway pasture into the lower meadow pasture. It was good for her to work him, as he wasn't wild and she gained some confidence in actually heeling cattle instead of just threatening them. She's had problems with some cows calling her bluff.

scott and i left town friday afternoon and headed to the ranch, where we stayed for the next few days. on our way out we picked up my mares, and saturday morning we left the ranch yard to gather one of the association member's cattle and move them down onto a meadow pasture, in preparation for weaning and shipping the calves.

i took my older mare, april, to ride that morning, and one of our tasks was also to pick up a cow/calf pair from the neighboring pasture that scott and i had missed the weekend before. it was good for lucy to work just that single pair, as she practiced where she needed to be in relation to the cow's flight zone, or how close she needed to get to the cow to get her to move.

we put that cow two pastures over where she belonged, and then helped finish gathering the big bunch of cows. by the end of trotting around over the big country out there, both april and puppy foxy were pretty beat. april is starting to show her age.

we stopped for lunch, then headed back out for a shorter job of gathering the rogue bunch of cows from several pastures, grouping them back together, and stuffing them in the same pasture the others just left. last i had heard, they were still there and hadn't run over any fences or gates. i used my other mare, jazz, for that.

sunday morning we headed back out to the meadow pasture where scott and bob's cows were. we brought them into the corral to sort the steer pairs off - the cows with male calves on them. the steers will head to the sale barn tomorrow. the heifer pairs will stick around for a little while, until the heifers get their trip to the feedlot in the big horn basin for the winter. they'll get fed a good diet up there, and come back ready to breed in the spring.

i used jazz to sort in the corral, and was very pleased with how she did. plus, she benefits from that sort of fine tuning every once in a while. she's very smart, but gets a little rough and undisciplined if she's not consistently worked.

so that was the weekend. the weather was beautiful both days - warm, sunny, and calm. i hear that's about to changes, as the forecasts are predicting snow over the next couple days. it was fun while it lasted!