Desert Boy Loses His Hat

See the cute hat Desert Boy is wearing? It's a denim cap with an embroidered horse and bear. His babysitter got it for him when she went on a trip. He had worn it only about a week when we decided to take a hike. I loaded him up in the backpack and we went out on the ranch for a walk.
It wasn't long into our hike that I saw some dark objects come into view. Hmm, must be some curious cows. But surely they won't come too close.
They kept coming closer and closer and even tried to surround us. I kept talking to them in a loud voice. Desert Boy helped. He likes to talk and shout a lot, and that's especially loud when he's in a backpack right next to your ear. I looked back at Desert Boy and found that he was not wearing his hat. In all the excitement of watching the cows come racing towards us and then alongside of us, I didn't notice him pitching it from his fair head. We started retracing our steps.
That's when I noticed that these aren't just cows, there are some bulls mixed in, like this big Red Angus. He seemed really big. And I noticed I was wearing red. I figured I was going to see if he really did ignore red like bulls are supposed to. (For more on this and what kind of cows these are, click here.)
Fortunately the bull kept on walking, and then we got a visit from this friendly horse. Desert Boy seemed to enjoy all these animal adventures. But we didn't find his hat. I went back twice and still never found it. And now I feel really bad that we lost his special hat. 

Cows 101

I live on a ranch, so it's probably about time that I talk about the cows!  I'm using the term cows here generically to mean cattle. Technically, a cow is an adult female bovine that has raised a calf, a bull is an uncastrated male bovine, a steer is a castrated male bovine, and a calf is a baby bovine. That sounds easy enough, but it so happens there are other terms. A heifer (pronounced "heffer") is a female bovine that has not yet raised a calf; a feeder calf is a weaned calf that is in a feedlot.

So in the interest of simplicity, I'm just going to call them cows. At least most of the time. You'll know what I mean.
We have a cow-calf operation, which means that we have cows that give birth to calves, and those calves are raised for beef. Some of the calves are kept on the ranch to replace old cows. A cow is usually kept for 10 to 15 years on the ranch as long as it is productive.

The gestation for a cow is 9 months, just like humans. Some other time we'll go into the details of how they're bred. I bet you can't wait. It really is fascinating. Anyway, when a calf is born, it usually weighs about 55-100 pounds. It stays close to its mama, but before long it is romping in the meadows with the other calves. We have several different kinds of cows on the ranch.

Black Angus and Red Angus cows provide the yummy steaks found in higher class steakhouses. Notice that they are all one color.

Black Baldy is a mix of Black Angus and Hereford. They have a black body with a white face. These are probably the most common type of cows we have on the ranch.
Herefords, with red bodies and white faces and bellies, are the type of cows that my husband's family started ranching with. It's a family ranch operation that has been passed down from generation to generation and is now operated by my husband and his brothers. 

During the summer, most of the cows graze in the meadows. In the winter, some of the cows go out on the desert range while others are taken to the feedlot. Cows are able to eat otherwise indigestable foods because they are ruminants and their stomachs have four compartments. After they eat food, they regurgitate it and rechew it, called chewing the cud. They may repeat this process several times until they have broken the food into small enough pieces that microorganisms in the rumen have time to break down the cellulose and other carbohydrates into volatile fatty acids, which give cows their oomph. Oomph is the highly technical term for metabolic energy, but I think oomph just sounds a little better. 

This is probably a good place to dispel one of the common myths about bulls, that if they see red they charge. That's why a matador uses a red cape to entice the bull to charge him, right? Not quite, it turns out that cows are red-green colorblind, so they can't even see the color red. The matador's movement of the cape is what attracts the bull. 

And because I'm an ecologist, I couldn't help but slip in a photo of some wildlife with the cows. The mule deer population on the ranch is booming. They find plenty of food in the irrigated meadows and fields, and a variety of shrubs provides good cover for them. Mule deer are also ruminants and you can go wear red near them without any problems, because they are also red-green colorblind. 

Driving Tractors Part I

First off, I've been told that Nature Boy is not viewed by some as a good nickname for my darling son. When I think of the term Nature Boy I think of a juvenile that has fun playing outside and doesn't like to come in much, but apparently the appellation holds other connotations for some. So if you have a better epithet for the little guy who likes to eat dirt, climb everything, wrestle with his puppy, eat dogfood, try to get into things he shouldn't, play in water, eat strange unidentifiable black things and get dirty, please leave a comment with your suggestion.

The ranch has many tractors of all shapes and sizes. Most don't work, giving my dear husband, his brothers, and the mechanic palpitations. Nature Boy doesn't care if it works or not, he just wants to see how much fun it is to pretend to drive it. So here are a few of the tractors on the ranch as Nature Boy "test drives" them.

This John Deere 720 is missing its seat (and probably several other parts), but it still looks cool. It sits down by the shop for everyone to admire (or not).

This is an important tractor, a John Deere 4450, which is used daily to feed the cows in the feedlot.
This John Deere 8100 is also used quite a bit.
Nature Boy likes the interior, but he will have to grow a bit to see over the steering wheel.
This seat appears to be a little closer to his size. He already knows he needs to shift. He's inside this old loader.

Here's an old John Deere 55. It hasn't been used in a long time, the wheels have sunk into the ground. But it has a lot of interesting looking parts.
Nature Boy pretends to like the different parts, but I notice he's putting some dirt in his mouth. When I tell him to spit it out, he just laughs at me.

Nature Boy loves the Backhoe (Case 580 Super M) more than any other piece of equipment, probably because he sees his Daddy use it often.
Or maybe it's because it has a comfortable seat. He crosses his legs all the time.

On the other hand, Nature Boy doesn't seem to mind the wind and lack of air conditioning in this backhoe. His Daddy says he needs to learn how to steer better. Maybe by the time he's 18 months. 

Going around in Circles

When I came out to the desert, I had certain preconceived notions, like there would be lots of cacti (nope), that it would be really hot (yep, at least in summer), that it would be boring (nope), and there would be lots of wide, open spaces with big skies and few people (yep). At least that last part is true where I live. And the reason is that there just isn't much water. In the state of Nevada, only 11% of the land is private, and most of that is near water. The early settlers knew that they couldn't survive without it, so they put down their roots in those wet places.

They planted gardens and orchards to feed themselves, and they planted fields in order to feed their livestock during the winter months. With not enough precipitation to have the fields grow on their own, the settlers diverted streams to water the fields. This so-called flood irrigation used simple technology at first. Today it is more complex, using laser levels to get the fields to the right slope and time-operated gates to allow water onto the field for a certain amount of time. Generally flood irrigation is time consuming, requiring people to move water around. Wildlife flock to the open water on the fields. 

As technology improved, hand lines became popular to spread the water more efficiently. Basically these are pipes with sprinkler heads placed along the pipes. The pipes latch together, so when a different section needs to be watered, the pipe is taken apart and moved. Slightly less work intensive are wheel lines, which have a small motor that move the pipes across the field. 

Two wheel lines can be seen in this photo. The small specks in the middle of the field are pronghorn antelope enjoying an easy meal.

Technology improved, and center pivot irrigation was born. The large circle fields that you can see from airplanes are the pivots. A tower in the middle of the field is the central point, and the water is sent through a galvanized steel pipe that is supported by trusses mounted on wheeled towers that go around and around. Sprinklers are spaced along the pipe. Pivots generally cover 90 to 180 acres.
When I first came out here, I wondered why the water was going all day long. Why not just water at night, when there would be less evaporation? It turns out that it can take up to seven days for a pivot to make a complete circle, and in order to get enough water on the fields, the water has to run both day and night.
To help reduce the amount of evaporation, hoses called goosenecks extend down from the water pipe to spray water closer to the ground. As the pivot moves around the field, water in the center sprays for less time than on the outer spans so that the entire field is watered evenly. Even by using water more sparingly, there are still few people who live out here in this rural area, due to the scarcity of water. Despite the internet and phones that make life seem "civilized," it still feels a little old-fashioned to live in a place that has the same population as it did roughly 150 years ago. 

Tomorrow: Nature Boy on tractors