August 17, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
It had been pretty dry up in the foothills on the ranch where we were working. To save the grass on the home ranch, the boss leased some pasture about 90 miles away and out on the prairie. He and his wife ran their yearling replacement heifers there, and in an adjoining pasture, their daughter […]
August 11, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
Growing up on and living on gumbo country most of my life, I have a very real fear of getting a horse bogged and maybe crippled in a creek or dam. I’ve had it happen, and as a result, had from early on, schooled my son on the risks of gumbo creeks and dams. I’m […]
August 5, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
We had been pulling bulls for several days as breeding season was over. It was rough, timbered, river break country with oak choked canyons and lots of brush so some of them were a little hard to locate. We were down to the last pasture and one bull was missing. They were mature Charolais bulls, […]
July 24, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
My Dad was an all business sort of guy in my growing up years, and certainly didn’t indulge in wild cowboy stunts. So, when he roped a badger, it was for a very good reason, which was to rid the ranch of a badger that had been digging up fence posts and making dangerous holes […]
July 20, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
It had been a long summer with lots of doctoring of yearlings. One bunch had a viral pinkeye and another had footrot. It just didn’t let up. The footrots I doctored where I found them, but the pinkeyes were driven to a little portable pen and taken back to the place where I could doctor […]
July 16, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
We day worked a lot back in the day and one of the people we worked for had a big summer range about 25 miles from us. It was good country with strong grass and plenty of water. He ran mother cows on it every summer and into the fall. He had a guy who […]
July 14, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
Hot summers on the northern plains aren’t unusual, but the summer of ’82 was hotter than average. Besides daytime temps of 100 plus degrees, it didn’t cool off at night much below the mid-80s. I was riding on a big string of yearlings and getting through them before it was scorching hot was pretty important, […]
July 10, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
Back in the era of riding bog lines daily it got pretty monotonous. Each day, no matter what else I had going on, that bog line needed ridden. Many times I pulled the same lamb out of the same bog hole for days on end. They weren’t quick studies. I was about 18 when another […]
June 25, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
The steers had blown through a fence, laying down hundreds of yards of woven wire, breaking off posts and braces, and had ended up on a creek bottom a mile or more away from their pasture. We had gotten the fence fixed and had the steers gathered and trailing back to their pasture. They were […]
June 24, 2023
Jan Swan Wood
In a previous story I talked about a dog we had called Kit. She was a bit wacko, to say the least, but a double tough head dog when she was working. Some places call them head dogs, others catch dogs, but they are one and the same, just depends on the region. My then […]