Ranch critters

I grew up with animals around me all my life. I don't remember not realizing that the animals were there on the ranch for a purpose, they were raised to sell, they were raised to eat or they were there to do a job. A few were treated more like pets but we did not have any full time house cats or house dogs that did not have a useful purpose.

Like any child, I wanted to do what my parents and grandparents were doing. Raising livestock.

It started early. We had chickens, of course, a small ongoing flock for eggs plus chicks my grandparents bought in the spring and were raised to sell as well as to eat. They were Buff Orpingtons, big hardy chickens that free ranged during the day and when a hen went "broody" they were inclined to hide their nests out. One hen hit hers in the hayfield, hatched the chicks and then managed to get herself killed when my grandfather started mowing. I was given the six surviving chicks to raise.

I sold my six chicks that fall, with the ones that my grandparents sold to the local butcher shop and put the money in the bank. The next spring I bought 25 chicks from the hatchery when my grandmother ordered hers.

The second year I could afford 50 chicks and learned the harsh realities of livestock production. A skunk got into the chicken shed and killed a number of chickens, including some of mine. That taught me something about anticipating income before I saw it in my hand. However, the survivors brought me enough money to buy a sow piglet from one of my grandfather's litters and the following year I had a litter of butcher pigs to sell. It was difficult for me to sell "Spot" but by selling that litter and the sow herself gave me enough money to buy my first heifer calf, from my father, the following spring.

She was the calf out of a 2 year old heifer who was clueless and left her out in the corral instead of taking her under the shed, so she chilled and we had the calf in the house, in a pen made of kitchen chairs, for two days. When she started jumping over the chairs, my mother insisted she was well enough to go back out to the barn, but she remained a "pet" all her life.

I was now in the third grade ... and a real rancher ... I owned cattle!

At that point things were put on a business basis. My father got half the "profit" for running my cow on shares. If I had a steer calf to sell, we either divided the sale money, or he got the steer calf to sell and I kept a heifer calf. By the time I was in high school I had four cows and my "cow money" paid most of my expenses. It bought another horse and paid for my school clothes as well as school activities and entertainment.

I've never really gotten away from that mindset. As an adult I've had cattle at different times in my life. I raised Rottweilers for 20 years as well, breeding, showing, training and working them. When I sold a Rottweiler puppy for $1000 several years into my breeding program, the first thing my mother said was that she wished "Papa" was still here so she could tell him I bred and sold a dog for more money than he'd ever paid for a cow!

I've bred and shown horses several times and am still raising sportponies with a breeding program that I spent 20 years establishing. And so many times I've wished that my parents were still here so I could tell them I sold a weanling foal for more than they paid for the first house they owned.

First childhood memory

Given my lifelong obsession with horses, my first actual childhood memory understandably involved horses. As an adult, I remember asking my mother about it, thinking it might have been a dream of some kind but although she couldn't believe I remembered it, with the detail I remembered, she figured out when and where it happened.

They lived in an apartment in Billings, Montana for a short period of time. Dad had been released from the hospital after 18 months of treatment for tuberculosis and was working there as an accountant, having been told he should never do hard physical labor again. I was not quite 3 years old at the time and until then, my mother and I had been at the family ranch, where I had lots of room to play.

Mom walked with me during that summer to keep me occupied and since the apartment was close to the edge of town, we used to walk in the "country" where I could see animals, as I was used to. There was a pasture with two horses where we walked and naturally, I wanted to pet the horses.

Eventually my mother met the owner, an older man who had retired, along with his last two saddle horses. She convinced him that as a ranch girl, she knew what to do around horses, so on many afternoons that summer, I ended up sitting on the back of one of the patient horses.

I very vividly remember the two horses, one bay and one gray and remember being lifted to the back of the bay horse and sitting there in absolute delight. Mother said she remembered I would lean forward and lay my cheek against the mane, putting my hands down and patting the horse's neck, lisping "niiiiice horsie!"