If there’s one thing I’ve learned while working at Grant Ranch it’s to bring your lunch with you. No matter where you go or how long you think you’ll be gone for, the safe thing to do is to bring your lunch. You never know if your quick “it’ll only take me ten minutes” job will turn into four hours. Or if something goes horribly wrong and suddenly your one job turns into seven more jobs.

Example 1

Checking fence is a straightforward and necessary job when you have cattle: make sure staples are doing what they should be, that the wires aren’t hanging low, and that posts are sturdy and in one piece. If you want your cattle to stay in and your neighbours’ cattle to stay out these are things that need to be done.

Early in the day I went out to check on heifers and sort out pairs, which then turned into “we might move cattle to that field, go around it and check fence”. Simple, right? Yes, but I misjudged just how big of a field it was and I didn’t have my lunch with me. I started checking fence around eleven. The time I got done? Four thirty. I told myself that it would only take a couple of hours, I’d get back to the yard at a good time to have lunch, maybe a little bit of a late one, but not that bad. My “just a little bit of a late lunch” morphed into an early supper.

It’s much easier to just bring your lunch with you at nine in the morning than to be losing your mind from hunger at four.

Example 2

There are some days when your late lunch turns into a ten minute break (another reason to bring your lunch with you wherever you go) as a backwards calf waits for no one. When there is a cow with a calf coming backwards (breech) we try to get them loaded and hauled to the yard quickly and before anything can go wrong. Breech calves aren’t good for either calf or cow. There is a large risk of suffocation as with a calf being backwards the umbilical cord is more likely to be pinched or break against the mother’s pelvis, it also makes for a harder birth. The shoulder are the widest part of a calf (normally) so once the shoulders are out the rest comes rather easily, but if the hips come out first there is less stretch and it is possible for the ribcage to catch on the pelvis.

This cow in particular was a tad bit high strung and just one person couldn’t get her over to our makeshift loading area, so backup was called. It took a while for us to get her moved to where we had fences and the trailer set up and for a second it seemed like she would load with some encouragement. However, our hopes were squashed as she turned around as soon as she was fully in the trailer and ran out. The mistake of leaving her to her own devices while we tweaked our game plan was made and when we went back to push her up we watched as she jumped the fence and rejoined the others.

So ensued another chase, this time with an either feistier cow. Panic is not something that you want for any cow in labour, calm is what help them through the birth, and for a backwards labour it just makes everything so much worse.

We managed to get her back to the gate which led to our loading doc, but as soon as the felt cornered instead of turning around and trying to get past us or going through the gate she jumped the fence, this time breaking and taking down the top two wires. So we had to go into a different field just to get her back up and through a different gate, however as we were moving her up along the fence line she once again jumped the fence back into the pasture with the other cows. We get back into the other field and decide that the only way we’re going to get her and get that calf out of her was by roping her. It had been way too long with far too much excitement for there to be a chance of that calf being alive, but it had to come out. Roping her was a challenge enough in itself, forcing her into the trailer also proved to be another challenge, but we did eventually get her in.

Knowing that there were other hands to help at the yard, I was put to the task of fixing the fence. Now, I have checked fence many times before, however I’ve never had to repair it by myself, I’ve only ever watched someone else do it. With everything laid out before me and a lot of trying to remember how it was done, I managed to figure things our on my own. While the fence didn’t turn out perfect it did get done and it works. Sometimes the only way to learn how to swim is by being thrown into the water.

There’s always something to do on a farm and even the days when it feels like there won’t be much, one job will probably multiply and turn what you thought would a short day into a long one. No matter how short of a job you think you’ll be doing, always bring a lunch.