Sunday, June 27, 2010

Ridin’, ropin’ and ‘Rithmatic

By Stephen L. Wilmeth

“Well, what did you do out on the range today, Little Buckaroo?” the tourist had asked. “Were you riding and roping and singing along?” The fact of the matter was I really didn’t know what to say because we didn’t use the term “range” in our speech. We used the term “country”. The actual response was probably vague and the dude probably went away thinking that this little kid was a lot like his kin and the rest of this hick community. What I did know was that I didn’t like the feel of it. Somehow my little story was left incomplete.

I had been standing next to the old time ice box at the Cliff Trading Company with my hat tipped back drinking a grape Nehi when the fellow had asked the question. What a great place that old store was. You had to open the lid of the box and reach down and pick out a pop. It always took a couple of times to make up your mind, and it was always so cold down in there with your hands going through the standing glass bottles. If Mr. Mullison caught you opening the box too many times he would say something, but he was very tolerant of the little cowboys that gathered around that box.

Ridin’ the range, eh? Actually, I had been out with Grandpa Albert checking waters and putting out cotton seed cake. It had to be June. It was hot and dry and the cattle were “falling away”. We were still checking heifers at least two times a day, and there were still a big number of them that needed assistance calving.

There was not yet any understanding of EPD’s or bulls that consistently produced low birth weight calves. School was finally out, though, and the ranch kids would all be available to start branding. By the fourth of July the work would be done and we could all go to the rodeo in Silver City. It was 1957 and the “sky was still 1950 blue and green was the color of the greenback dollar” and local ropers were a heck of a lot more popular than any professional. If the latter came to a Grant County rodeo there was a better than even chance the former would win, too.

Through time, the tune the tourist sounded that day would echo through my mind. It would make me wince. I got the same feeling when, years later, I attended a musical production and the cowboy was made to look too much like a fool. The other characters were pretty well impersonated. The charros, the miners, the loggers, and the town characters were all on target, but the cowboy, well, he wasn’t the cowboy of my world. His hat looked like it had been sat on before the fool took the stage and he pulled it down so far he had look up to see down. A real cowboy wouldn’t do that.

Perhaps I had been around mentors that made the clarity of thought and action more distinct. Perhaps, too, I had seen a world through the interpretation of their eyes. I have become convinced their world was a process of study and work more akin to oriental medicine than western medicine approaches. They would observe results and make decisions without needing to understand the complexities of the process. Their aptitude in a world where they had to be anything and everything they faced was amazing.

But, can I finally come to grips with the unanswered question from 1957? What does a day in the life of a cowboy, a cowman, really mean? Let’s start by saying that my ranching colleagues and I are becoming as much or more interested in genetics of feed conversion than we are in carcass traits in our cattle herds under desert conditions. Milk production in our cows probably needs to be more moderate than we have been trending toward in the last two decades. We probably need to spend more time and effort maximizing our cull cow weights and dropping our average age of cows in the general herd. Although every operation is different, our operation is really showing robust turf growth if we can concentrate our herd and minimize herd presence on the majority of pastures during the monsoons. To duplicate that, though, water supply has to be enhanced in order to support those concentrated herd numbers.

Mature cow size has dramatic impact on the standing feed bank. A 1400 pound cow is always impressive coming down the alley at you, but her 1100 pound counterpart is just more efficient. We will prefer that she is red, but the majority of our colleagues will still take the $.05 to $.08 premium on the black cows’ calves unless a March 15 shipping date can be accommodated and that always increases management demands. A good problem to have is decadence in Tabosa stands while black grama, drop seed, and other summer grasses are still above 60% usage at the time AUMs are depleted, but wouldn’t it be better if those Tabosa stands could be better utilized?

Cow size, as a general rule, will tend to reflect conditions of our “ranges” . . . and there it is at last . . . range! We’ve come full circle to what started this little diddy. The question from 1957 with all of its suggestions and unanswered qualifications is not an easy question to answer. Life on the range is a continuum of constraints, long and short term decisions, and risk. It isn’t just ridin’ and ropin’. It requires a bit of ‘rithmetic, too. Would that dude have understood if I could have answered the question? Would he even care? How about the rest of the world?

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