We need some western cowboy pictures, or yarns.

See Wyman Meinzer’s photo book of “The Waggoner Ranch.” Wyman is a good friend of our family and my fav cousins son, Josh Rodriguez, is featured. It is truly awesome. Enjoy.

Thank you!

Richard I've never been much of a story teller but for the past week we have been dealing with a high headed old bitch of a cow.

We have some small pastures here close to home where we run old cows/calves without a bull. Wean the calves, fatten up the cows a little and sell them as canners. We've been hauling them feed for the last 45-50 days and should have pulled the calves sooner but our feed yard was a mudhole and we waited until it froze up to bring home the last 50 calves.


Anyway last week we pen the 20 or so old pairs in the 'railroad pasture' and proceed to haul them out in a stock trailer. First load ol' #710 blows by me and shakes her head doing the sideways Mexican fighting cow routine. Immediately I think sonuvabitch this old hide is gonna be trouble. Sure enough she's getting squirrelier every time we come to get another load. Last load she is the last cow on the trailer and just as I run up to slam the trailer gate she spins out of the trailer.


Now is when the fun starts.


She's the only cow left in the pen and really wigs out. Knocks my dad down, and starts running around the pen like a race horse. I holler at dad to get the hell outta there! He was slightly stunned and kinda looked at me and I said GET THE FUUCK OUTTA THERE NOW!

Luckily crazy bitch spies the weak point in the corral and hits it at full throttle blowing right through.


Great.


She is running full out, tail in the air, head high. I'm thinking god damn it, no way we're gonna get her back in!

Light bulb came on a few seconds later and I let out a 'calf in distress call'. Somehow she heard and stopped looking back at the corral. I wasn't sure if we'd already hauled her calf home but when I looked in the trailer the calf just happened to be looking right at me standing in front of the slider gate. SWEET! Open it up and he jumps back out into the loading alley were we locked him up as bait.......


Wait a few days for the old bitch to settle down and get hungry and we lured her back into the repaired corral. No way in hell could we go into the corral with her so we load the calf first and figure if she knows her calf is in the trailer she might load up behind him.

Wrong, she gets wild again and crawls/jumps over a 6' steel panel on the alley way and back out she goes.


Sonuvabitch!



Repeat the hunger game and we caught her again on Monday.


This afternoon we chained up a heavy duty panel and set it at about 8' high. Load the calf and she starts for the trailer but gets goofy again. This time she jumps up on the frozen water tank and over a 5' panel tearing it all to hell.


I looked at the boss and said I'm shooting that bitch tomorrow.


He agreed.

So what really went wrong last week🤔🤔🧐

Thank you Sam, enjoy the cow beef. No video? Beef is a premium product, the buyers likely have no idea what it takes to get it to them.

I was just getting ready to ask why you hadn't turned the crazy cow into hamburgers

She will load....meek as a new born lamb.


I have threatened to shoot em before........they must be able to understand.

Do you want that old Ed Bruce song again?

Make sure you use a Creedmoor and post the video.

I'd of shot her sorry ass the first time she blew out but.....

The local butcher shop burned down last year and the closest one is 50 miles away. It's been years since I hauled a dead critter over to them and they got chitty about it last time.

I'm not gonna butcher the old bitch myself so the fricken coyotes and eagles can eat her.

I don't know exactly what canners are going for right now but I bet she go 1200-1300 pounds. Probably $800?

Sonuvabitch!



Of course we have 2-3 froze eared decent sized coming 2 year old steers that they'd steal in the ring so we'll fatten them and get steaks with our burger....



If anyone wants to come gut and load up the bitch cow have at it.

I enjoy hobbin' with the Montana boys, may your lives have that secret ingredient. .

Maybe 800.



Seen some go for 500.



Course.....if she gets in the trailer she gets sold.



Been lots of times I have had to say........dang....I really wanted to shoot her.......

She sure sounds like hamburger on the hoof to me.

Do you guys have any processors who will still take a "farm kill"?

Everybody around here has to see it walk up the ramp, or else killed by a licensed mobile butcher.

ETA: Never mind. Already asked and answered.

Richard, I'll pass on the stew!



Jim, for a 12 year old cow she gets around damn good!

We got to thinking that even if we did get her loaded you hate to haul her to the sales barn and then chance getting someone there hurt.

Drop her off at the butcher I guess but I'm done wasting time on her.



This will be the first time I have ever had to drop the hammer on a cow that we couldn't handle.

I've wanted to about 100 times before but....





Idaho, our local butcher would take her no problem but the outta town guys might raise a fuss.

Not a lot of profit on dead cows. Do what you have to.

Maybe you can shoot two or three coyotes off of her and make up the loss on baby calves you saved.

Good Luck. Been there. Never had to actually waste one. But there have been a couple which the mobile butcher shot in the pasture because they refused to cooperate.

That's a pretty good story. Sometime I'll tell about castrating these four or five year old Hereford bulls that were wild as deers and had horns the size of Longhorns. Good times.

Some critters are best in easy-to-handle 2 pound packages.

At least she raised a big ass ol steer calf.


But yeah, you hate to shoot something and see it go to waste. But no way am I setup to butcher and process an entire cow. That and I have enough other chit to do as it is.

Hell of a lot better than getting someone hurt though. Dad has a nasty bruise on his arm where he hit the ground.

Praise God for polled cows.

Sam, you are MUCH more patient than I.
However, IME, the mere appearance of a gun seems to assure cooperation - for whatever reason.
Probably to deny me the pleasure!

Now, there is a hell of a difference in the life of a pampered milk cow and a range beef. But sometimes an old cow will surprise the hell out of you.

My Dad bought a Guernsey heifer when I was a year old. She had her first AI X Holstein calf when I was three. That old girl had a half Holstein heifer calf every fricken year until I was 21 years old. We had eighteen guernsey X holsteins in the herd just from that one cow and the entire rest of a 100 animal herd was descended from her daughters. Of course each one bred to a good AI Holstein. Some of them had less Guernsey blood than Ol' Pocahontas has Indian blood.

It's a shame Dad did not buy a lottery ticket the same day he bought that spotted Guernsey heifer.

This is as good a place as any to tell this story. Speaking of cows and guns.

Dad was twentyfive years old when he met my Mom in 1955 and they got married. He had an old 1934 coupe of some kind, twenty acres of bare ground he had just purchased, an old wooden walled cow trailer with a stanchion in the front (yes, all you old boys remember them from the fifties and sixties), a sleeping bag, and a yearling holstein bull as his only earthly possessions.

That holstein bull was nothing but a pet. Dad had taught him to pack, pull a cart, and he (the bull) was "high school educated".

Dad showed him at local rodeos at intermission and things like that as he grew to full size. A cowboy could lean back on the bull's face between his horns, and the critter would push the cowboy around on the rowels of his spurs like little castor wheels. The bull was saddle broke. Dad rode him jumping hurdles and rails.

When Mom and Dad got married, they hitched that old trailer to the back of the coupe, loaded the bull into the trailer, and a weeks worth of supplies into the back of the coupe. Then they disappeared into the Owyhee Desert Mountains for a week, using the yearling calf as a pack horse.

But back to the gun: Dad had trained the bull, by the time he was full grown, to roll out and flatten a rolled blanket in the middle of the rodeo arena. Of course all by hand signal. But for the audience there was a lot of hollering and shouting going on while it seemed the bull was being uncooperative.

Once the blanket was rolled out flat. Dad would take a bow and the bull would kneel for the audience.

Then Dad would tell the bull to roll up his bed and put it away. And, of course the critter would just look at Dad and shake his head as he was being told to do by secret hand signals.

After a bit of pleading, and some more hollering and shouting, Dad would threaten to shoot the bull. Still he just stood and shook his head. Until Dad stepped to the side and picked up his Remington model 14 in 30 Rem.

The bull would quickly roll up that blanket neat as could be. Time for another bow, and that was the finale of their act.

Yeah, if she is just nuts, well..........we all have experience dealing with crazy females.


If she is a killer.........it just aint worth it.


Especially for a 500-800 bucks.


That wont pay for the ambulance trip.

Pop is a lucky man.

Turn her loose on the rez. Let someone else have at her.

Boils down to - a cow is not worth the price of a decent hospital bill.

That’s a great story! Thanks for taking the time to tell it.

Dont you have a buncha injuns up that way?

A few years ago we bought some heifers off my dad's buddy. At one of our farms, we have to move the cows between pastures every week or so. The cattle love the fresh grass, so they usually run to the new field. However, Everytime we tried to move them this heifer would lift her head, take her calf plus 6-8 others to the back of the pasture.
It was decided we couldn't have this cow teaching everyone bad habits. Same deal, maniac level chithead in the corral, escaping etc. We barrowed a dart gun from a neighbor and walked it on the trailer like a drunk puppy.

We sent a group of old, big bodied cows who raised their last calf directly to Cargill. It was a before Christmas, they averaged just over $400. No animal is worth getting hurt over, but definitely not for that.

Let some trusted folks know that you have to put her down and donate the carcass to them. They'll show up with a little tow-behind trailer and haul her away to be butchered on their own place. And you'll forever be the good guy.