MNA

The Farrier

Lennie Phillips — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 14:19:44 +0000

As we get ready for calving we make sure we have all the right gear – warm jacket, long underwear, a good pair of boots, maybe some new gear and horse shoes. That’s right – horse shoes! Not only do we get ourselves ready for calving, we get our horses ready too… and part of that is a good set of shoes. Shoes help protect the horses’ hooves from rocks and hard, uneven ground. Are they necessary? Well, that depends on who you ask and has a lot to do with the horse. Some horses can run around and do just fine without a set of shoes, but most horses, however, need them. For me, I consider them a necessity for any working horse — would you go to work for 14 hours where you’re on your feet the whole time without a good set of shoes? Me either, and that’s why we plan a couple of days at the start of each spring for the farrier to put the first set of shoes on our horses for the season.
The farrier can do about 6-8 horses a day if he’s putting shoes on them, more if it’s just a trim. He can do 6-8 horses in about 5 hours. So you’re probably thinking – there’s more hours in the day, why not do more? Well, you try being bent over in a fetal position for 5 hours straight holding up 1200 pounds of muscle and tell me if you feel like doing more. A good set of shoes lasts about 6-8 weeks and then we do it all over again until the horses get their winter vacation from work, sometime in late November. So, here’s just a few pictures to show you what shoeing a horse entails.

Babies!

Lennie Phillips — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 14:00:24 +0000

It’s that time of year again that the babies start to come and we sure look forward to it. This year we had 4 mares due to foal in the end of March/beginning of April, before things got too busy with calving cows. Two of the mares were maiden mares (meaning they had never had a baby before) so we weren’t sure what to expect from them. They both did great and both foaled very early; one had a filly and the other had a colt. The one that had a colt foaled 11 days before her due date, and if you know anything about foaling horses, you know that when a mare has a colt she generally goes at least 2-3 days longer in her gestation, and we’ve had them be as much as 2 weeks late. For this little guy to be 11 days early was a big surprise and he was a little bit of a preemie too but he’s doing quite well now. The two older mares had great big colts with long legs and they are both extremely friendly little guys. They all appear to bay/bay roan in color although we won’t know there true color until they shed off their foal coat. There’s nothing cuter than a baby and I sure enjoyed taking these pictures of them, I hope you enjoy them too.

The Easter Bunny

Lennie Phillips — Fri, 06 Apr 2012 14:17:40 +0000

Seeing as Easter is just around the corner I found it ironic that I just happened to run into this jack rabbit, as well as appropriate to have some rabbit pictures to post. I was going out to check on some horses and this rabbit just hopped in front of me; of course I just happened to have my camera with me. I debated whether or not I would be able to get my camera out in time but the rabbit just sat there not 15 ft from me and it seemed like he was waiting. So, I got my camera out and started taking pictures and the rabbit came directly towards me, went right past me and out the gate… probably to go hide some Easter eggs.

Buttercup in the Springtime

Lennie Phillips — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 15:40:26 +0000

I have a cute story that a friend here (who is a teacher) told me. She said she was teaching school one day and one of her female students who is around the age of 8 came up to her and started telling her about her horse Buttercup. This little girl was telling the teacher how buttercup is a sweet horse but in the spring time she gets really frisky and likes to play and buck and act up. Then, out of the blue this little girl said to the teacher (remember it’s a small town and everyone knows each other) that the teacher’s husband reminded this little girl of Buttercup in the spring time. Needless to say, it gave the teacher quite a laugh. So, being springtime (I think) our horses are acting the same way… and if you’ve never been around horses, this will give you an idea of what Buttercup in the springtime looks like.

March – in like a lion, out like a lamb…

Lennie Phillips — Mon, 26 Mar 2012 18:29:54 +0000

Too bad they forgot to tell the weather that, because March came in like a lamb and has been all lion. As you can see from the pictures, winter is still here and it’s coming down in big, wet, flakes. Hopefully spring is somewhere around the corner.

Breaking horses

Lennie Phillips — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 18:20:12 +0000

Winter on the ranch is a somewhat slower time as there’s not a lot you can do when the ground is full of snow and ice. We generally feeds cows, do some basic maintenance on equipment and if we have time we work with some horses.

We have a big enough barn that we can set up a make shift round corral in and it at least gets us inside and out of the elements. You can’t really ride any of the horses in the barn because the beams are too low and you’ll end up hitting your head on them, especially if a horse goes to bucking with you. However, we can do a lot of ground work and get the horses used to the saddle, bridle and ropes. These pictures are of one of the cowboys doing such work with one of the ranch horses.

The Fox On My Morning Drive

Lennie Phillips — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 15:51:43 +0000

I’m headed to work this morning and I’m listening intently to the radio because there is some crazy news story on about a new use for toilets in Japan. They were saying that they have found that they can use toilets as desks if they have kids straddle the toilet backwards facing the tank……….the tank can be used as a desk top. Why am I telling you all of this, because this is the reason I almost missed these amazing shots. So I’m listening to this crazy story, looking at the radio thinking – who makes this stuff up – and out of the corner of my eye I see something. I turn and look and see a fox sleeping off of the side of the road and he’s watching me drive by. I slowly put the brakes on because everything is a sheet of ice out here, reach over to get my camera out of its bag, get it dialed in for the morning light, roll down and window and put the vehicle in reverse hoping the fox is still there and hasn’t taken off which most of them would have done. As luck would have it, he was still curled up in a ball and I got one picture of him this way and then he got up. I was thinking – at least I got one shot, now he’ll probably take off. To my surprise he didn’t, he sat up, yawned a little bit and then I was thinking – this is my kind of fox, I can definitely relate to that. He then started to wander off but stopped and started looking at the ground turning his head to the left and right and in a blink he jumped straight in the air and came down on both front feet trying to punch through the snow and get whatever creature was stirring underneath it. The snow being pretty hard and crusted over he wasn’t able to get through and looked kind of defeated. Regardless of his lack of success, it was an amazing experience to watch let alone photograph. He then wandered off in the distance and I finished my drive to work.

Winter Vacation for the Horses

Lennie Phillips — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:51:14 +0000

Each year, after we are done shipping calves (usually in early December), we take about 2/3 of the horses and run them to the mountain for the winter. The reason we do this is so that the horses we have been using hard all year can get a winter vacation. And, there is still plenty of grass on the mountain for them to feed on. When the horses run out of grass, they bring themselves down, and we start feeding them hay for the rest of the winter. Well, these pictures are from last weekend when we were bringing the horses off of the mountain and to the main ranch to be fed.

The Drive to Work

Lennie Phillips — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 16:17:56 +0000

Most people complain about their drive to work … there’s too much traffic, it’s hectic, busy and, at the very least, it’s stressful. Well, I really can’t complain about my drive to work … it’s all of seven miles, on a dirt road (which would probably be my biggest complaint), and I don’t have to worry about traffic jams … unless someone is moving cows that is. However, even a cattle “traffic jam” isn’t such a bad thing when you have views like the picture below. In fact, I can actually say I enjoy the delay.

I took this picture on my way to work the other day as the sun was coming up, and there was a hazy fog laying low across the pastures. When someone says there’s no way they would want to spend winter in Montana, I just smile, as I know what they are really missing out on.

Here’s a video about life on our company ranch!

Meyer Natural Angus — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 13:15:00 +0000