The day it stops bothering you, is the day you don't belong

So I want to tell y’all a story. It’s not based on a true story with a bunch of Hollywood fluff; it’s just an honest, true story.

A few years back, I was home on Christmas break from college. As per usual I spent most of my break on the ranch with my dad. It was a cold and drizzly morning, the sun was nowhere to be found and the clouds were socked in. All the cows and their calves had been gathered the day before and were in the field around the corrals that morning. It’s December so all the cows should have calved by now but true to some cows’ fashion, they keep that bun in the oven longer than was originally planned. So the day before, I preg checked the few cows that had yet to calve to see if they were open or if there was a calf getting close to making his/her arrival. Remember this.

Side note: for those of you not directly connected to ranching I’m going to let you in on a little secret—things never go according to plan, no matter how hard you try.

Back to the cold December day: the game plan was to grab pairs and put them in different pens based on the breeding groups they needed to be in. In theory it was supposed to be an easy, half a day’s work...LOL.

Side note #2: if a rancher ever says anything to the effect of, “it won’t take long at all” be prepared to spend (at minimum) 18.5 hours and all your wits on said “simple” project.

As we are saddling our horses my dad and I notice a whole bunch of cows in a circle similar to the kind you find junior highers in at the dance, at the top of the hill. We trot up there to see what all the commotion is about. Remember how I preg checked a few cows the day before? Well as I palpated one heifer I laughed and said oh hey there kid, and looked at my dad and said I’m no expert but even I can tell that calf will be here any day!

Back to the dance circle: the calf had arrived! Which is usually one of the most joyous parts of ranching, but it can also be one of the most frustrating and heart wrenching parts too. There was this little calf in a heap on the ground, steaming and wet and his mom had left him there. I picked him up and took him to the corrals while my dad went to get the heifer in (plans already derailed). I went straight to drying him off with towels; our friends there to help us that day made a bed of hay and lent the little guy all the jackets they could find. We built him a fire and covered him in more hay.

The heifer jumped the fence and flat took off. Our ranch climbs from about 1,500 ft. in elevation to 4,000+ ft. in less than four miles. So when a cow decides she wants to take off and hide, without the proper man, dog, and horse power, she’s going to get away with it for the time being. So we eventually got started on the job we had originally set out to do. By this time it is now raining off and on. Which I would like to make clear, I am not complaining about! It just can make certain jobs a touch more difficult at times. The cattle aren’t cooperating, at all. There are miscommunications between members of the crew and an “easy” task turns into pure frustration and that’s just never a good ingredient to add to the mix when working cattle.

Finally we get the number of pairs we need in one group and send our help home. Because Lord knows they more than deserved a hot shower, a good meal, and chance to dry off and warm up. All dad and I had left to do was take out a breeding group to their fields, just had to sneak past the replacement heifers. Again, what should be an easy-ish task...well as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now wasn’t so easy. But that’s a whole other story I’ll save for next time because otherwise I might as well just call this a novel not a blog.

Now that it’s about 5 minutes from being pitch dark, it is pouring down rain so hard you can hardly see, frustrations are at an all-time high, horses are flat worn out and so am I. I get back to the tack room to unsaddle and feed my tired horse to find the fire we built for the little calf is still going and he lets out a tiny little moo as I walk up and even though it’s the last thing I feel like doing at the moment, I can’t help but smile. I lift up the pile of jackets and towels on the little guy to feel he is as warm as the summer sun, and I think, okay, good sign. I put my horse away and pull my truck to the closest gate, put my dog in the backseat and lay a towel down in the front. I jog back down to the tack room, put out the fire and scoop up the 35 pound calf (about 1/2 the size he should be) and lay him in my passenger seat. Homeward bound.

It’s still raining, the house is dark and cold, I’m the only one there. I grab the little calf and bring him inside. I throw a couple towels in the dryer on the highest setting while I work on getting the fire started. No hot coals were left over from the last fire. Of course. I walk outside to grab some kindling and most of it is wet. Of course. I dig deep enough to find just a few pieces that are fairly dry, crumple up some newspaper and get to work starting the fire. I get it started but I can’t keep it going. When I said my frustrations were at an all-time high earlier, I lied without knowing it. Because NOW they were at an all-time high. I’m scrambling to keep this calf warm because it’s the only way to keep him alive. But I can’t get the DAMN fire going. And now I need to tube the little guy. Emphasis on little, remember he’s only 35 pounds, tops. Tubing calves is a difficult task already, but especially when they’re as small as this guy was, the margin of error I could recover from was slim to none. Don’t get the tube down the right“pipe” and he’s dead.

I successfully tubed the calf one handed as I held him between my knees and with my other hand. He couldn’t stand on his own. I hate crying, but you bet I shed some serious tears during this whole process. Now that I have some nutrients in the calf I go back to the fire. By this point the towels in the dryer are nice and warm so I grab them, wrap them around the little one and walk over to the fire that still isn’t going. At this point I give up on starting the fire and just sit down in front of the wood stove still in my dripping wet clothes, chilled to the bone with the calf in my lap wrapped in warm towels and my corgi, Scout right next to us. A few more tears fell. Happy and pissed. Happy the calf was still alive, happy I tubed him successfully, pissed at the cow for leaving her calf, pissed at the way the day had gone, if I’m being totally honest still a tad pissed at my dad, and pissed mostly at the damn fire. A few minutes roll by and I hear the rumble of my dad’s Dodge pickup and I see headlights. And at that same moment, my back is suddenly warm...the fire started.

Scout and I spent the night in the living room watching over the calf, stoking the fire and keeping a rotation of warm towels on the calf. I’ve never seen that dog so protective over anyone, dang sure never a calf. But he never left the little brockle faced calf’s side.

The calf lived in the house for three days with Scout and the rest of my family. We continued to tube him and pray the little guy would pull through. We did everything we knew how to do. But the brockle faced bull calf didn’t make it. Despite our very best efforts and every ounce of hope I had. He was never able to stand on his own and although I knew that was not a good sign (calves should be standing within about 30ish minutes to an hour of birth) I never gave up, neither did my parents or brother. Neither did Scout.

So all of that to say, ranchers care. We care about the health, well-being, and quality of life of our livestock. We don’t do this to get rich in monetary terms; we do this to become rich in compassion, kindness, work ethic, knowledge, and so many other qualities that make up the best kind of people. We do this because to us, it is the best way of life. There’s no other way I wish I would have been brought up than in a ranching family. I would never trade in the memories of stepping over more baby calves in the mud room than shoes, or the privilege of watching a calf be born and stand up on those wobbly legs for the first time. I also wouldn’t trade the hard work or the struggles. Although I wish I could change the outcome of some of the situations like the little brockle face calf, I know that we can’t always defeat Mother Nature. That calf was born premature and breech (backwards), he never received his mother’s colostrum, his chances of survival were slim, but that never stopped us from trying. We provided him with the best life we could while he was here. And that’s what we do for all of our livestock.

Ranchers are tasked with feeding the world, providing a safe, nutritious, and wholesome product. We do that by raising beef. We are not only the producers, but we are also the consumers, along with our families. Just like you and yours. We give up clean homes for one filled with dirty clothes and bottle calves. We give up hours of sleep to fix fence and water lines to make sure our cattle are provided for. We believe the Lord has chosen us to look after His land and livestock for a while and we take great honor in that opportunity. We work to serve and please Him by providing for His children, and treating His land and livestock as our own, no matter whose name is on the property title.

This story didn’t have the warm and fuzzy happy ending I’m sure you hoped it would. I know it didn’t end the way I hoped. Losing one always hurts. But unfortunately it’s a harsh reality of this lifestyle. We can’t save them all, but we can sure try. Something my dad said to me that has always stuck is, “The day it [losing a calf/cow] stops bothering you, is the day you don’t belong in this industry anymore.” And I remind myself of that on every bad or discouraging day. It’s good that we care. In fact it is absolutely necessary.

So to you reading this, if you ever wonder if the ranchers producing the beef you purchase at the grocery store care about the animals they are raising, I encourage you to come talk to us. I promise others have stories just like mine; about both the heartache and the joy they find in ranching. And after listening to our stories, it’ll be apparent just how much we care and how proud we are of what we have dedicated our lives to doing.