Small horses for small kids

The grand kids need ponies to play with on their next visit to the ranch.  Therefore 2 pony mares were purchased.  Blake and Arden can spend their spare time training them.  The grand kids may have to train them for riding as they are fairly small.  One mare is chestnut with a white mane and tail, the other is black with many white hairs.  They are both coming 2 in the spring.  We may need help from the grand kids in naming them.

New guard

Adding the sheep enterprise to the Wohlers Ranch is not without predator risk.  We have lost baby calves and maybe older calves to coyotes over the past few years, but sheep, especially lambs are even more susceptible to becoming coyote dinner.  Therefore we purchased a guard llama as a herd protector.  Llamas are known for bonding with sheep and actually chasing, even killing coyotes that try to get an easy meal.  This llama is a 2 year old male that we will halter break as Blake has that experience from his days of exhibiting llamas at the fair.  We are looking for suggestions as to what his name should be--please help.

herding dog school

The best way to train a good border collie to work cows is to start their training with sheep (they aren't so intimidating).  So we purchased 7 Dorper ewes, a hair sheep-so there is no need to shear them, for Kate's schooling.  At the introduction Kate is still intimidated, we may have to wait a few weeks to start school.  These 7 ewes are all pregnant and since this is the first sheep to ever be on the ranch it is a new enterprise.  Hopefully they will all have twins and there will be 14 lambs to market this fall.  Does anybody desire lamb for Christmas dinner?

coyote meal time

We have an animal die at the ranch occasionally from a variety of causes, last week we lost two calves from bloat.  These calves did not eat for a time because of stormy weather, then they overate when they again were able to get to feed causing the bloat.  However as nature intended this allows us to take the dead calves to a canyon were the coyotes know there is an occasional meal.  Travis gave me a trophycam that takes photos when triggered by motion.  I placed the camera overlooking the coyote meal for 96 hours.  The camera took 500 photos during that time of a coyote entering or leaving the site or chewing at the dinner plate.  Only 6 photos

where taken during daylight hours and 4 of those where of tumble weeds.  Every time the camera photographed a coyote eating 10 seconds later there was a photo of him exiting (he must be camera shy) however he quickly returned.
As you can see I need to set the correct date and time in the camera.

New livestock worker

A sad day occurred at the Wohlers Ranch in October when Blake and Tom were moving cattle off the highway back into pastures during a severe blizzard when Tom our border collie was hit by a vehicle and killed.  We placed an order with a breeder of champion border collie working dogs for a puppy out of 2 litters he was expecting to be born in November.  This past week Blake picked this puppy out of 14 to be his next helper.  She was born on November 19 and will be weaned and come to our ranch on January 2, 2014.  Blake will spend the next 2 years training this pup to be the best she can be, wish him luck.

Tumbleweed catchers

Tumbleweeds are dried plants (usually kochia on our ranch) that the wind blows across the prairie after the growing season.  This year they have been particularly abundant only stopping their travels when they get caught by a fence.  The ranch has 44 miles of fence so many are caught here.  A problem occurs when there is considerable drifting of snow also caused by the wind.  The snow accumulates on the caught tumbleweeds crushing the fence breaking many wires.  Whenever we have a snow event this winter the fences will require immediate repair before cattle escape the ranch boundaries and we have to go hunting for them.

Predator overabundance

We have many coyotes on the ranch, last year there were 3 dens with pups.  I like having them around to help keep the prairie rats in balance.  Coyotes usually work as solitary hunters and the ranch will lose 1 to 3 baby calves to them each year, I consider this acceptable.  However, Blake came across a pack of 4 coyotes that had chased a 500 pound steer ($900 value) through the fence and killed him.  A pack of 4 indicates too many coyotes so they join together to bring down bigger game.  We called in Joe "the coyote trapper" to reduce the number of coyotes on the ranch before calving season next spring when they could cause considerable more damage to our baby calves than normal.  This is Joe's first catch, hopefully he will get several more soon.