Posts Tagged ‘cowboys’

Worried by a Heifer Dragging a Rope

September 28, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

Some years ago, I was heading to the eastern part of the state to announce pedigrees at a horse sale. I was going across the big, open country of the Cheyenne Reservation, admiring the river breaks and goodgrass from the highway. Further along it drops off quite abruptly from the prairie down to the river […]

Louisiana Swamp Cowboying

June 29, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

In 1948, my Dad’s family sold their eastern Colorado ranch and started the process of moving to western South Dakota. The livestock were sold so they didn’t have to be moved. Restocking the new ranch would be done after a headquarters was established to receive livestock off of the railroad. My uncle and his wife […]

Bull Power

June 24, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

It was turn out day for the bulls on the ranch I worked on way back when. The bulls were all maturebulls of Simmental and Charolais breeding and they were big boys. Most weighed up in the 1700 to 2000 pound range, but several were even bigger.One purebred Simmental bull must have weighed 2400 plus, […]

Bruised, Not Broken

June 21, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

We branded last weekend. We worked the cows first and replaced a bunch of faded out ear tags andpoured them for flies. They worked hard, as cows sometimes do, probably because there were just toomany people around, most of whom they weren’t familiar with. Cows know their people and aren’t tooworried about them, but strangers […]

A Cowboy Gets Western

May 12, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

Back 20 years or so, before everyone and their dog had a cell phone, cell towers were few and far between and cell service was very spotty over the whole country, but most particularly in rural ranchingcountry. Most people in the ranching country didn’t bother with one or only had one for when they wentto […]

Lily and the Boggy Crossing

March 26, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

We were riding on about 1800 steers and 300 cow/calf pairs on a summer range that was split into fourpastures, running for miles east and west but not very wide. The cows were in the furthest east one andthe steers in the others. Dividing every one of those pastures was the most treacherous creek I’ve […]

The Crazy Horse I Had to Own

February 27, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

The first time I ever saw the horse I stopped in my tracks. He was the vision of a using horse that hadlived in my head for several years. The guy who owned him was using him in the sale ring at the cattlesale. As the day went on, I watched the roan gelding without […]

Pretty Shadow Cowboys

January 27, 2026
Jan Swan Wood

The word had been put out in the area to keep an eye out for a heifer missing from a ranch a little out ofmy neighborhood. Yearling heifers can sure cover some country when they take the notion, so I had been watching for her. I was still riding on about 1800 head of cattle […]

A Bond Between a Boy and a Horse

September 18, 2025
Jan Swan Wood

We’d gotten a call to go help at a branding the next day, so my boy Colin went out in the pasture to catch his horse to have her in for an early start. His horse was turned out with the broodmares on thehayfield by the house, so he headed out across the hayfield with […]

Crippling Kelly, Blind Fox and Cows

September 12, 2025
Jan Swan Wood

It had been a long, hot and dry summer grazing season and it was a relief when the yearling cattle I’dridden on all summer had been shipped. I was short of horses as I’d lost my top horse to lightningmidsummer and had sent the outside horses home that I’d been putting miles on. I still […]