Last week we had a light dusting of snow on the ranch that quickly melted away on the prairie floor, but left a little moisture in the mountains. The mountains right now look like they've been dusted in powder sugar and usually remain that way until the next snow.

Watching the bison in the early winter morning or in the snow is always a treat as they blow big plumes of air and snort around as they eat. When the clouds clear away and you can see the sand dunes behind the bison, the landscape looks surreal. The mountains typically have dark patches that stand out against the snow, but the sand dunes stay completely white and look like a miniature, pure-white mountain range against the 14,000-ft stark patches of black and white. This picture below was taken at sunrise as the light was coming over the mountains.



In addition to the sporadic snow, we've had a friendly owl flying around making visits on the Medano. Tess and I have seen him on the sign above the driveway to our house, on the light pole and most recently, on the banister next to my office. He calmly sits there and watches as we go about our business and will sometimes sit there for 20 minutes while we're outside and then we'll look up and he'll be gone. He lives in the trees around the old headquarters and has a nice house next to ours, where he sits in the old windows and scouts for meals.

For the past few weeks Tess and I, and Jeff and Carla have been traveling to the Chico to help out with their weaning process. Overall it is a 3 week process that is currently in it's third week. In the first week we gathered all of the pastures across the Chico with cow/calf pairs and slowly brought them closer to headquarters where the actual weaning would take place. Last week, once everything was gathered in a nearby pasture, we took the giant herd into the corrals and spent a full day and the next morning sorting moms, heifer calves and steer calves to separate corrals.

Our weaning process involves positioning the newly separated mom and calf across the fence from one another so that they can slowly get used to being apart and cuts down on their stress, especially during the winter months where they need to be in top condition to ford the elements.

Gradually over a few days the mama cows wander off in pursuit of new grass, water and often times they are carrying a new calf in their belly, so they now have more time to be alone in preparation. The calves do the same on their side and in the hunt for a full belly of water and grass, soon forget about being dependent on their mothers.

This week everything will be spread back out into individual pastures and the weaning process will be complete!

This past Sunday, a good majority of the bison herd decided they were going to take an afternoon walk to new grass. We looked out the window and saw a line of buffalo slowly walking, almost as if in single file, as they migrated to their next location. The line kept progressing across the prairie and the never-ending herd continued as far as the eye could see.

The bison move around quite a bit and you never know where they'll end up. Some mornings you'll see the breath of hundreds of bison pluming into the air in the meadows all around our houses and headquarters, and some morning they will have completely vanished. For big animals, who move of their own volition, they get around quite a bit.

When it comes to managing cattle and horses, be it during Summer, Winter, Spring or Fall, there are countless philosophies on what should be done and how much human involvement is necessary. The following is an article that explains our winter management philosophy, on Horse and Rider UK's website. Thank you Top 50 Ranches for getting the story.

Click here to read the article.

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope you all enjoyed some quality time with your friends and family. I have been enjoying some time back on the east coast and up until a couple days ago, the weather has been warm and sunny, making it a nice break from the valley winter. Before I headed back here, we were really busy wrapping up the season and starting to get ready for next season. In the last couple of months we purchased around 15 new horses!! It was a very exciting process for me and everyone should look forward to some more wonderful horses to ride on your next trip out to visit. Some of them have been up on facebook for new names (either they came without or their name was Joe- and we already have too many Joes)! Once I get back to the ranch, I will hit the ground (hopefully not literally) running on getting all these horses in shape and ready for next season. I am really happy to have some additional horses to add into our guest string, as it should allow our horses to have more time to rest. Our plan is to put them on a rotating schedule, so they are ridden 2 weeks, then turned out on pasture for 2 weeks. This should help them maintain their ideal body condition throughout the season, as well as prevent those who are a little prone to developing attitude problems from actually getting those attitudes.
Well, after being out riding in the sub zero temps, and for those that know me well, you know that it was very brave of Jeff to have me out in those temps (I'm not always the nicest person when cold), I was welcomed back to Maryland with temps in the 60s and abundant sunshine. I have spent a good deal of my time here getting my horses back into shape. I brought Zack and Chance back to Maryland (they were a little too tall for me to get on and off all day). I have been taking a lot of jumping lessons and trying to get them ready to sell. Next week, I will be heading even further south to spend the week working with a wonderful horseman on breaking young horses. I hope to be able to share all I learn with you all this season!
Above is a picture of Chance and I jumping last week- just a little insight into the other side of riding.

Tess and I got home on Friday after spending the holidays away and were greeted by a pleasant surprise when we got home.

We've seen a large, adult bobcat several times near the lodge in one of the nearby pastures on the Zapata, but never anything around our house and Jeff's house on the Medano. We were taking the Christmas decorations down and Tess said, hey, look, a cat, no, wait, that's a bobcat. The bobcat we saw was an adolescent that came slinking across our yard looking for the rabbits and mice that make our yard and the nearby pasture their home. He looked just like the picture above that I found on another website.

He quietly snuck across the yard with his huge hind legs, covered in thick winter fur. I personally had only seen one adult bobcat in the wild, never a young guy on the hunt and blending in so perfectly to the snow and sand. As quick and quietly as he came, he was gone.

All of the animals have their winter coats on right now and the coyotes in particular look huge with their big winter fur.

Last night we came home to an owl sitting on a post in our yard, who was also hooting at me the night before when I was getting wood from the scrap pile by headquarters.

I enjoy listening to the animals and watching them in winter because the sounds are more crisp in the cold air and when we have snow as a backdrop, everything looks a little more pristine.

Here is a picture of the horses moving out to their new pasture.

We always say that the ranch calm down in the winter- well not quite! The past couple of weeks have been busy and just a tad chilly. I have spent a bit of time on the road lately looking at new horses to purchase for our string. On Friday, Carla and I headed up to Longmont, CO to look at horses and trucks. We spent most of the weekend doing this (though we did make time for a bit of clothes shopping and fine dining)- luckily we found a few really nice horses to bring home. We ended up not being able to head home until Monday, thanks to a snow storm. It was my first time crossing the pass with snow and ice, but we made it safe and sound and the horses are settling in well. On Tuesday, we moved most of the horses out to pasture. Even with the snow on the ground, it was a lovely afternoon and the scenery was just beautiful. Wednesday morning Jeff managed to convince me (well there wasn't really a choice) to ride out at 6am to bring the cow/calf pairs into the corrals. It was -11- I was not a very happy camper, but I survived it! We sold all the calves, so we had to sort them off and load them onto the truck. By the time we trailed the cows back out around 11 the weather was much improved. Tomorrow we are heading out for the first of 3 days of moving bison. I have to say, I didn't think I would be spending this much time on hroseback in December, but it has given me a great opportunity to test out some of our new horses. Stay tuned to facebook for a naming contest- we are in need of a few names!

As promised in my last post, I want to recount a couple of my favorite stories from bison round-up, so here goes....
On Monday, which was day 4, there were a couple herds hanging out near the old Denton place (in the southwest part of the pasture) and twin lakes. We had already run in a small group out of the meadows, so we trotted down the driveway, almost to the red gate. We didn't want to cut out to the west too soon, for fear of disturbing the bison before we were ready for the charge. I was on Duke IV's team for the entire week, and our team generally took the front on whatever side we thought they would break towards, generally the north if it is an option, or the west. Since there were actually two herds a bit away from one another, the plan was for 1/2 of our team to ride way out to the west in the sand hills, then come in from the west to avoid the front herd from running away from us. Therefore, I was left with my brother to take control of the the front of the first herd. I had been riding behind Duke for most of the week, so was accustomed to being in the front, but not the very first rider! We were able to successfully charge the first group and get them top join perfectly in with the first group. As the groups joined, Duke, Kate, and Jay came down from the hill and slid right in front of me. We were able to keep a solid wall built, with help from Jeff's team sliding in from behind. Our team leaders, as well as members, were all communicating wonderfully. Since we had the west side walled up, the herd took a slight turn for the east, but big Duke's team was there to prevent them from going anywhere. We ran them beautifully across the south meadows, they hit the corner gate by the headquarters, and then headed either for the west gate of the trap or the southwest corner gate. For each run that came in this way, Duke, myself and usually a couple tohers would bust a move for the other gate in the fence that runs west from headquarters, so we could get through and prevent the herd from breaking to the west. We were generally very sucessful in this, thanks to our fast moving horses. In that run, we only lost 1 pair, who were fatigued, it was a spectacular run. And the best part was that Alf was flying in a plane above us taping the run! It scared my half to death when I first heard the plane, and then looked up to see it coming for what looked like my head, but it ended up being SO cool to run along with a plane flying over us time and time again to film our wonderful run. I can't wait to see the footage!!
I apologize for a lack of a better photo, but we all know that I like to post pictures of myself. And Nadine happened to have this picture. I couldn't manage to take pictures while we were running (I probably would have bit the dust)! I owe a huge thank you to my horse Fred, he was the BEST!

Today finished off our annual bison processing for the 2011 year! (Well, almost, we may still run another 60 or so animals through....) It was a successful year, due in large part to the wonderful crew that assembled down at the ranch over the 2 week period of time. Gathering the bison from throughout the 50,000 acre pasture at the Medano is truly a unique experience. For the next couple of weeks I will try to post various stories from the week of roundup, as there are so many to tell. This year was quite different from last year even, it is a constant learning experience working with these "wild" (and most of the time they really do seem wild) bison.
Once we have rounded up all of the bison that we are going to collect into the large trap, we start our bison processing. For this period, we all tend to stick with our same position throughout the week, so we can each tell something a bit different. My job last year and this year was "record keeper," a job I rather enjoy. I get to see each and every bison that cames through the shoot up close and personal- see the photo above! I age each animal that comes into the shoot, so we can keep a running tally of each age and sex group, ie yearling bulls, or 3 year old cows, etc. The calves are obvious by their size. For the others, I check their teeth to tell their age. Yearlings will still have all milk teeth (or baby teeth), though they will be large milk teeth (as opposed to calves tiny little teeth). Two year olds have two large teeth in the very front, and the rest are milk teeth, and it goes on from there. I can be certain of ages up to 4 years, then we simply call them old, as their teeth are no longer accurate. We work with the USGS to collect data on our bison herd, so I work closely with Kate to be sure we have accurate information on each animal. This year we put EID chips into each bison- these are very small electronic ID tags that go into their ears, just like those used in dogs and cats. Kate was able to then enter the animals age, sex, weight, and pregnancy status into her computer, so next year we will be able to scan the animals' ear and pull up all of the info! This may make my job a little less fun, yes I do like opening up their slobbery, rough mouths, but it will be very interesting as well.
As I said, we do still have 60 or so bison who are in the small trap, but haven't yet decided to move into the pens. When they do, we will have a few more to process, and we still have several trucks to load, but for the most part, the work is complete. It will be rather lonely around here tomorrow when all of the gang who came down to help packs up and heads out, but it sure has been a fun couple of weeks!