Shipping

We have shipped about 3500 cows (steers), maybe a little more, in the last 3 weeks. We ship a different amount each day, mostly depending on how many trucks end up making it to the ranch (it always seems to be a different number than what we were expecting).

The shipping day starts with gathering all the steers and pushing them into the corrals. Once in the corrals, we run them down an alley and onto an enclosed scale. We weigh about a dozen at a time (give or take). My job has been to run the gate on the exiting end of the scale, and count the number of cows that were just weighed so we can get an average weight for all the cows- once the whole group has been weighed. Its a pretty simple job really, most of the time they are easy to count. Sometimes though, a bunch will come running out in a group instead of lining out one or two at a time and I have to think a little harder (hehe).

The challenge comes in staying focused in the monotony of the routine. After weighing and counting hundreds of cows, it is easy to get distracted. That happened to me this week. When I opened the gate my mind was busy adding up some other numbers, and I flat out forgot to count. When I realized the cows were running down the alley away from me, I had to quickly estimate which ones were just coming from the scale and not part of the ever growing group already standing in the corrals. Its nice that this isn't a super high stress operation-you get laughed at long before you get yelled at (which I've never seen happen).

Once all the cows have been weighed, the truck backs up to the ramp and the cows are loaded up in groups to fit the stock trailers compartments (they can all be different). These cows are "Mexican" steers, and heading to feed lots in Texas for the winter, then to your table in the spring.

Only a few more shipping days left, the next one will be on Friday, the day we head home for Oregon. Then, things at Squaw will be pretty quiet until next spring. All the remaining cows/pairs/bulls have already been moved down to the lower end of the ranch for the winter.

So, we've just about seen the "season" come to a close up here at Squaw. I hope you've enjoyed it, we sure have.

I'll likely do one more post before we head home, so hang in there.