Category: Ranch Life

Unlike the livestock, our Other Animals are our pets even if they have a duty here on the ranch.  Take for example our chubby Labrador, Cage.

Cage is really good at his job, which is to follow us around sometimes, but lay in the shade at other times.  He has a keen intuition that tells him when he should do one or the other.  If Jeremy is driving the tractor, he follows until it gets too dusty or too hot, and then he lays in the shade, and occasionally takes a dip in the pond.  His other job is to not eat the livestock or the other pets.  This sounds simple, yet we’ve had some trouble with this in the past – which is why Cage is an only dog, whose brothers have gone off to live in the city.  Sounds kind of backwards, doesn’t it?

One of the icky problems that comes with living on a ranch, besides something obvious like poo, is the pests.  We get all kinds of bugs, inside and out.  We also get mice in our barn, sometimes even rats.  We have pest control, of course, but you know what takes care of mice and rats better than a tall man in a little truck?

 Tiger

Don’t let his prettiness fool you.  He is a fierce warrior, killing and disemboweling many a rat.  He is also incredibly loyal, especially for a former feral, and follows us wherever we happen to go on the ranch.  His dad, on the other hand, has retired to the porch in his old age.

 Simon

It’s hard to see in the photo, but his underside is completely copper-toned from the number of hours he spends sunning himself every day.  He’s earned his lazy ways, though.  When he adopted us 4 years ago, he was battle scarred and road weary.  The vet estimates his age at around 16, which says a lot for his spirit.  Their story is interesting and filled with heartache and peril and triumph over hardships, but we’ll have to save that for another day. 

We also have three inside cats, and their job is to do absolutely nothing.  They are very, very good at this.  They like to keep me on my toes, taking turns throwing up in the night in places where I’m most likely to find it (with my feet).  

Our first year as ranchers, we started out with two steer named Premium and Malcolm, both of whom were delicious, in their time.  Next to be acquired was Vienna, who was a little “mutt” calf Jeremy took pity on and brought home.  She was 5 weeks old and had to be bottle fed 3 times a day.  I was pregnant with Alison at the time, and both Vienna and Malcolm would nuzzle my belly while I held the bottle.  Needless to say, we bonded.  Vienna is a full fledged cow now, having had several calves of her own.  Most recently, she had little Uniqua here:



And just because calves are so dang cute, let’s see her attempt to stand for the first time:

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?  As it applies to us, the answer is the chicken.  We started out with a rooster named Gran’ Pappy (he was the most beautiful bird I have ever, ever seen), a hen and a moody teenage-type chick.  The teenage-type chick was so attached to her surrogate parents that she laid on the hens’ eggs with her, and took care of the chicks as if they were her own when they hatched.  It must have been nice for the hen to have a nanny, that first hatch.  Pretty soon we had a whole flock of chickens. 

This is just a few of them.  They refused to gather for a photo.

We have two large coops, both of which have outdoor space and nesting areas.  There are also two breeding pens, and three cages (small, medium and large) for the baby chicks.  We used to let them stay with the flock, but the term “pecking order” really does refer to pecking.  In the case of a large, ornery hen versus a baby chick, one of them is going to get its head pecked off – literally. 



Once we’ve got plenty of chicks, the roosters are taken away from the flock and rotated in the breeding pens throughout the summer and fall.  Without the roosters chasing them around, the hens finally get to earn their keep.  Their eggs can be one of several colors, depending on the breed of the chicken.  We have white, brown, and blue eggs here on our ranch.  We’re just so diverse like that.

The eggs can also range in size from large to itsy-bitsy.  Typically, your first year hens are going to lay about 20 dozen small to medium sized eggs.  Your more mature hens are going to lay fewer per year, about 16 dozen, but they are larger eggs.  We cull the flock each fall and keep the good producers through the winter, when they don’t lay at all because there are less than 14 hours of daylight. 

As you might imagine, we usually eat a boatload of eggs.  This year, with Blythe being allergic, we’ll probably be selling the majority of them.  We don’t, however, eat our own chickens because that is just too much work.  Dirty work, at that.  We have enough people interested in buying our chickens so that I can go buy some boneless, skinless breasts at the store, no plucking or neck wringing involved.