Pat & Sharon O'Toole

Feeding cows, Powder Flat cairn
Moffat County, Colorado
photo by Pat O'Toole

At the turn of the year, I showed the evacuation of our ewe lambs from our desert ranch at Powder Wash to the Red Desert, where the rest of our sheep are wintering. A few days ago, we had to do the same for our desert cows. We loaded them onto a semi and trucked them up the Home Ranch to join the rest of the cows. Meghan or Pat hauled hay out every day, but it became clear that we are not in for a January thaw, which would expose last summer’s grass for grazing. The desert cows are horned, and much more independent than the mountain cows, who are used to almost daily attention. Nonetheless, it was time to bring them home, and feed them until spring.

Thanks to our neighbors, the Raftopoulos's, who let us use their corrals. Ours are completely drifted under. They are feeding 1000 cows at a ranch about five miles from our Powder Flat headquarters, so had a tractor and an employee to do the plowing. We trailed the cows over the day before the truck came. This was a big help to us.

I didn’t get any photos of the semi because we were busy loading. One cow managed to get under Pat, and tossed him about like a rag doll. Alas, I have no photos of that either, but he did live to tell the tale, with only a little limping. We had a few cows and calves that wouldn’t fit on the truck, so we hauled them home in horsetrailers (after changing a flat on one of the trailers).

Today, I was in the local grocery store, the Stage Stop. The proprietor told me, “I wish you ranchers would stop praying for snow!”

Loaded for home
Arambel Place, thanks to Raftopoulos's
photo by Sharon O'Toole

Calves in the back of the pickup
Arambel Place
photo by Sharon O'Toole