Crowding Pen Horse Wreck
- August 12, 2024
- |
- Jan Swan Wood
Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life
We day worked for this couple for quite a few years. They had us handle all their cattle work, as they knew they weren’t cowboys. Their business, besides farming, was buying top end heifer calves and
grooming them toward being replacements. We handled them every time they were handled, with the idea of making them the nicest cows that ever lived. The premium prices paid by repeat buyers bespoke our success at that.
On this day we were pregnancy testing the heifers. They were sure a pretty set, big and soggy and fresh
off of summer grass. I was working the crowding pen on Lily, who to me, was the best crowding pen horse that ever lived. She was unflappable, reliable, and had the size to hold her own. The heifers had
worked well that day, and were a little too willing to go into the crowding pen. It was a long pen, maybe
16 feet wide, 30 feet long, that led up into a split that either went to the loading chute or the working
chute. The system worked pretty good.
I would hang to the side of the pen near the end of the alley, as each bunch came into it. Lily would stand quietly while the heifers walked through the gate, then we’d ease past them and keep them flowing up the alley and into the chute. This particular bunch, which were the last of the heifers, was moving a little faster than the others and more heifers came into the crowding pen than was needed. Before I could get to the end and turn any back, they had Lily and I mashed against the fence. I was concerned, as a friend of mine had had a horse go down under a bunch of heifers and he got hurt really bad.
In spite of the in-gate still being open, the heifers just kept pushing. Why they were pushing like that I don’t know, as they were being handled well coming in, but the fact was, Lily and I were in a bad spot. As big as Lily was, the heifers were pressing my spur into her side. I wear a long shanked spur with a fairly large rowel, so she was sure feeling it. I pulled my foot out of my stirrup and bending my knee, pulled my heel up out of the way. Lily relaxed, as she had thought I was asking her to move and she was already against the fence. We kept trying to move down the fence and out of the crush of heifers, but weren’t making much progress. Lily was calm but determined.
Suddenly, one of the heifers, apparently panicking over the whole press of heifers, started lunging through them, right toward Lily and I. We had nowhere to go. The heifer mashed the ones next to us down enough to get her feet under herself, then launched herself again toward the fence. In so doing, she caught my boot toe on some part of her anatomy as she went up on Lily’s hind quarters in her attempt to escape.
My foot, with the toe turned so hard, drove my spur into Lily’s side up under the saddle blanket. It stands to reason that my knee didn’t previously swivel that way, either. Lily was sure startled when that happened and she gave a big, Lipizzan leap, high and straight ahead, coming down straddling a heifer. She didn’t make another move and kept her feet under herself as the surprised heifer crawled out from under her. The heifer who had attempted to jump over us had fallen back into the pen on her back. That seemed to break up the push, though, as heifers started turning and going back out the gate. When about a third of them were back out, the gate was closed.
My knee was smarting, as was Lily’s side I’m sure, but we finished working the heifers. As I rode out
of the crowding pen, someone pointed out that Lily was bleeding. I stepped off to loosen my cinch and
see if my knee would still work, and went around to examine her. Blood was running in a sweaty trickle from under the saddle blanket. When I turned the corner of it up to look, there was a deep gouge in the muscle over her ribs, just ahead of her hip. No wonder she’d jumped like she did. I led her over to our outfit and pulled my rig off of her. With my pocket knife I trimmed the little chunk of hide and flesh off that wasn’t going to heal back down, and washed it out. We were done for the day, so I left her unsaddled. Doctoring her would have to wait until we got home.
The wound on her healed faster than my knee, as my knee is still not good after all these years. She had a dimple like scar there, though, that haired back in bay on her roan hide. Just a reminder of a close call in a bad situation. She was never nervous or worried in the crowding pen thereafter, and she remains the greatest crowding pen horse that I ever rode.
Related Posts:
Posted in: Featured, Ranch Life
About Jan Swan Wood
Jan was raised on a ranch in far western South Dakota. She grew up horseback working all descriptions of cattle, plus sheep and horses. After leaving home she pursued a post-graduate study of cowboying and dayworking in Nebraska, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and South Dakota....