Sorting cows from calves - Hunewill Ranch

At the time of this posting, guests on our "Spring Cattle Work Week" are doing sorting just like this.  Watch this video in HD for best quality.

Raising Kids in the Beef Business

Raising our kids so they understand the beef industry is part of what we do here on the Hunewill Ranch.

Aspen, Rhiannon, and Dalton - November 2013 when they first started working with their steers.  At this point Aspen's weighed 670, Rhiannon's weighed  820, and Dalton's weighed 760.  They were about 7 months old.

The Hunewill Ranch is in the beef business as well as the guest business and so the children who grow up on ranch experience raising steers and heifers through 4-H and FFA as a part of our identity as beef producers.  What this experience teaches our kids is how to humanely raise and produce beef on a small personal scale. How to look for good bulls and cows to get the best product that a consumer will want to  buy and how to have fun with it along the way.  

We start in November by picking out what animals will go and then we feed them and work with them for the next five and half months.  Some of the animals have gone before like Rhiannon’s cow Pumpkin had gone as a heifer last year and this year she was shown as a cow/calf pair with her new calf, Sweet Potato- next year Sweet Potato will go as a heifer.  Dalton’s heifer this year, Lulu, was part of his cow/calf pair last year. 

Kids learn that even on a cold winter morning the animals have to eat.

This year Dalton, Rhiannon, and Aspen competed with their animals at the Nevada Junior Livestock Show in Reno last week. But looking back through the years this is a family tradition.  Jeff, Betsy, and I  (Megan) competed throughout our youth. Then Jeff and Denise’s kids Blair and Leslie, then Jon and Betsy’s son, Tyler, and now my three kids are carry on the tradition.  So every decade since the 1960’s there have been members of our family showing out in Reno in May. 

The kids go to work outs with other kids and get the animals used to being hauled, weighed, and handled.

 

Rhiannon working with her cow/calf pair and Dalton's heifer looking on-May the week before the show.

When we pick the steers we pick the best looking steers with the gentlest dispositions that we can find in our herd.  Good dispositions are very important since a stressed out or high strung animal doesn’t gain well and isn’t easy to handle.  Jeff, Betsy and I learned this the hard way in our younger days we took some beautiful animals that kicked judges, drug us all over heck and gone, or ran us up fences.  As a rule when we started managing our large cattle herd we really tried to breed for disposition, among other traits, and we culled any animals that might pass on wild or dangerous disposition traits.  

By the time April and May arrive the animals, both heifers and steers, have gained and grown and are ready to show.  

Dalton and his steer at Nevada Junior Livestock Show- this steer weighed 1201 at this time and won the rate of gain contest for the show.  This means he put on more pounds than any other steer that competed. 

Rhiannon and her steer at the sale. He was a beauty and weighed 1313 and was the Champion Home Grown steer.

Aspen with her heifer Daisy.  This heifer was a twin( of two heifers)born in 2013 that we raised on a bottle till we grafted her on a cow that lost her calf.  She was Reserve Champion Home Grown at the show.

The heifers and the cow/calf pair come home with us to go back in the herd and spend the summer in Bridgeport on grass. For the steers this is the end of a very good life that we have shared with them. They were raised humanely, with good handling and great feed and we are proud to be in the beef business.  Aspen is a little sad to sell Ketchup, her steer, but she says he had a great life with us that he wouldn't have had otherwise. 

Lulu and Daisy back from their trip to the big city of Reno. They are getting turned out in Bridgeport and telling their heifer friends about the sites they saw. 

May 21,2014- Megan Hunewill

Some Things Never Change

Some things never change...

There's always a cowboy perched on a fence somewhere...

...or mares trying to hog the grain...

...or a panel of experts with plenty of opinions...

...or the attraction between colts and kids...

...or your good cowpony resting quietly and waiting for his next job.

Whether it's 1930 or 2014, some things will never change.  What would you like to read about or see pictures of in a future blog?  Please let us know on Facebook or leave a comment below!
All photos on this post are copyrighted to Hunewill Land & Livestock, all rights reserved.  

Mayday Mayday- It's May 1 and the Hunewill Ranch is hopping!

It's May1 and summer is zooming up on the horizon!

 A rite of spring at the ranch is opening things up in Bridgeport. Irrigation water is starting to come and being spread over the meadows. Warmer days melt the snow up high and start bringing it down to Twin Lakes, but the cold nights freeze things back up. We won’t have as much water as we had hoped for but the motto of the rancher is to make do and keep going. The water is turned on at the ranch and we have to see if there was any damage to pipes (even though they were drained) over the subzero winter.  Trees often blow over and lose branches so there is lots of grounds clean-up to do. And of course those same winds just blow debris everywhere- this year a metal water trough was blown about a mile from where we left it and across the Twin Lakes Road.   And of course this is also when lots of cabin maintenance takes place.  Jeff, Denise, Jennifer, and Leslie walk through cabins and see what needs painting or repairing.  

The Hunewill Crew last Sunday branding calves. Most Western States have strict brand laws. However,  in the eastern U.S. that is not the case.

   So far we have roped, branded, marked, and vaccinated 260 calves this spring in Smith Valley getting them ready to go to Bridgeport.   It is springtime here in the Eastern Sierra and what that means for us at the Hunewill Ranch is that we are busy busy busy! It is a transition time for us of gearing up for the guest season in Bridgeport and moving cattle and horses from Smith Valley, Nevada to Bridgeport, California. This year because of the drought we moved our horses early than normal in April by trailer and did not have the horse drive. This was necessary due so we can let the grass grow in Smith Valley so the horses will have something to eat when they came back next fall. Don’t worry we will bring the horse drive back next year or we may have mutiny on our hands from the younger generation in our family.

  We will ship 118 cows and calves on Friday.  Today we got those cows and calves ready to ship by bringing them closer to the corrals and getting them brand inspected. The state brand inspector has to come and make it legal for them to cross the state line into California.  It was hot for May 1, it got up in the eighties and the cows did not want to move.  

  While Jeff and I moved this group of cattle, Blair and Leslie were sending cattle over to the Carson Valley on some leased pasture and then going to Yerington to meet the trucker and ship our heifers to Bridgeport.  Tomorrow it’s 6:00 am to horses to have the calves separated off their mothers and ready for the truck. 

 

Meet "Star", the curious Beefmaster heifer.

   

Of course there are a million other things we are doing right now, like getting things purchased for the gift shop, hiring our great staff for the summer, taking an inventory of supplies, communicating with Forest Service about our working outfitter permit, as well as our grazing permits, and of course communicating with all of our guests on the phone.  

 It is hard to believe another summer is almost upon us, but in several weeks we will have guests driving down our road to share our ranch experiences with us.