Ping Pong Lambing

When a person raises both cattle and sheep, her daily focus ping pongs between their disparate needs.

But when calving season morphs into lambing season, that ping pong ball is abandoned.

The cows are on their own until healthy lambs play king of the hill -- even when they drift through a swamp to the wrong pasture.

That swampy hole moved up my priority list, but wasn’t at the top.

Yet.

The ranch apprentice, Jennifer, and I had just finished feeding ewes and lambs when my neighbor called.

This was bad.

He usually texts.

My cows found greener pasture in his fragile, tilled cropland.

I scrambled for a plan.

First, I texted my mom, asking if she would feed the four orphan lambs that need warm milk every four hours.

Then we saddled horses, rain dripping down our necks.

Jennifer was eager to learn, but she had no idea of the scope of this project.

I said “Better, grab an apple. This might take a while.”

The ground was already slick when we unloaded the horses.

In the distance, the cows casually raised their heads.

Busted.

We gathered them into a bunch, pointing them east toward home.

Eighteen of the 19 cows found the hole in a low spot.

They rounded the hill, out of sight, before Number 19 noticed they were gone.

Jennifer learned a lot about handling cattle -- and geometry -- from that yearling steer.

The horse got down and dirty.

The steer taught the consequences of angles quicker than any ninth-grade math teacher.

I wanted a buffer between my frisky cattle and my neighbor’s vulnerable crop so we pushed the cattle farther east to the right pasture.

As we gathered the herd, we found two more holes between my neighbors and me.

That information would pay sooner than I expected.

At 2 p.m., we unsaddled, ate a quick lunch, changed into muck boots and loaded fenceposts.

We planned to fix the swampy hole in the right pasture, then move to the buffer pasture.

By then, the cows had made a new hole. They were back in the buffer pasture.

We pushed them back and tied up the corner with yellow twine.

Birds were chirping in the welcome rain when Jennifer said “I think the cows just made another hole.”

Posts clanged and my pickup bounced as I raced to the hole in the low spot where Jennifer had learned geometry.

I beat the cows by two minutes, pounded three posts, then raced to the next hole with cows hot on my heels.

I had to beat them to four broken posts and wire on the ground at the top of a hill.

As I desperately pulled at barbed wire, the cows trotted over the hill, spotted me and nonchalantly pretended to graze.

They didn’t fool me.

I knew they were waiting to check my patch job.

Jennifer had fixed the broken gate by the time I picked her up.

The ping pong ball bounced as we scouted for newborn lambs on the pasture. Five ewes had chosen a mucky, dripping day to bring new life to this world.

Normally, I would taxi ewes with new lambs in the trailer to the barn, but by 8 p.m., it was too muddy.

I’d jackknifed a trailer in mud just like this and I didn’t need to experience that again.

Jennifer walked newborn families from the south side of the big coulee while I worked the north side.

I lost one wild ewe in the dark. The last I saw, her lamb was by her side.

Everyone was fed and watered by 9:52.

Except us.

Jennifer’s phone said we walked 24 miles. That’s not right, though. Probably 15 of those miles were on horseback.