September 26th, 2020, Volume 15, Issue 38
Our cattle have been eating away gaining weight in Davis Mountain for about a month now, and they’re all looking really nice and FAT. Just the way we like em!
Riding out with Shayne and Cooley
To see how much weight they’ve gained we took a sample from Randy’s pasture and weighed them on Wednesday with Shayne. It was interesting to learn how much refinement and subtleness there is to weighing cattle. All your horsemanship skills are put to the test when you’re in the scale house, but that’s good because then it becomes clear what you need to work on in the arena. Shayne also taught us the importance of keeping the cattle calm when cutting one out to push it onto the scale. We weighed 20 head and they all gained an average of 50 pounds, which Shayne said was a good amount.
While we were weighing, wranglers and guests began pushing steers back to the Belgard from Davis Mountain. It’s a long day of cowboyin, but everyone was happy to be out and really enjoyed our fall weather. The sunshine was short lived though as we’ve gotten some much-needed rain the last 2 days. We had the quintessential dry Montana summer this year, and experienced quite a bit of smoke, but a couple of good rains later and the smoke has left us. Thank god!
In the arena Des has had us working on figuring out how to move our horses feet in order to get them soft. This has
Movin Steers!
really helped Yellowhair and I, especially on his harder side. Des reminded us that softness comes from the feet, not from the head. We’re always learning here at McGinnis Meadows, I’m lucky that Yellowhair, Des and Shayne are all such great teachers.
Happy Trails until next week!
Alyssa
Levi and Scotch out at Graze
Sophie and Joy