![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.sylvandale.com\/ranch_stories\/media\/Troubled-Teens-cattle-drive--150x150.jpg\" "\\"Troubled")
<\/a>The Yearling Cattle are the troubled ones<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n
There’s no such thing as a routine cattle drive.\u00a0 Just ask the group of Sylvan Dale Ranch “adventure riders” who helped move sixty yearlings from their winter pasture back to the main ranch on Saturday, April 14, 2012.<\/p>\n
Seven of us saddled up at 9 am, the spring sun warming our faces, the deep blue Colorado sky and crisp air thrilling our senses.\u00a0\u00a0 We figured we’d be back by noon.\u00a0 We figured wrong.<\/p>\n
As we rode toward the winter pasture, we took note of the problem areas we’d encounter on the way back:\u00a0 several driveways, a home with an inviting lawn, a stretch of county road with occasional cars, a highway crossing, and a steep, red-rock ridge to cross.\u00a0 The yearlings had made this trek in the opposite direction six months ago with their mamas.\u00a0 Now they would be on their own.<\/p>\n
It was easy at first.\u00a0 With a fence line on one side and riders on the other, the youngsters moved right along through their familiar Big Valley, fueled with early-morning energy.\u00a0 But when they moved past the fence through the gate onto the county road, their teenage bravado turned to caution.\u00a0 It was as if the ones in the lead, bold at first, started feeling a little anxious with no adults to show them the way.\u00a0 They kept bunching and milling, and taking off in bizarre directions.\u00a0 Oh, and did I mention eating every green blade of grass in sight.<\/p>\n
We managed to get them across the highway with only a 12-car backup, but when we passed by a neighbor’s fence with some older cows inside, the fun began, a great commotion of nose touching, bellowing, and pushing.\u00a0 Our team of adventure riders, old hands by now, got our herd moving again and headed it up the road toward the high ridge crossing.\u00a0 Then one of the riders looked back.\u00a0 One of the neighbor’s cows, a big red mama with a wildly swinging udder, had broken through the fence and was racing to join us, hell-bent on who-knows-what, maybe thinking her calf was with us.\u00a0 No role model, she stirred the now sullen teens into rebellion, with head butts and bawling rants and three refusals to pass through the gate leading to the high ridge.<\/p>\n
“Patience,” we told ourselves, and it finally paid off.\u00a0 We got the wild bunch heading up the rocky draw and over the ridge.\u00a0 About half way up the runaway mama finally peeled off and headed back to our neighbor’s pasture.\u00a0 Good riddance.<\/p>\n
The rest of the drive went more smoothly, save for an unscheduled dismount by one of our drovers, whose horse lost its footing in a pile of composting horse manure next to the road above the stables.\u00a0 She made a graceful fall into the manure pile, the softness of which we all began to appreciate.\u00a0 She “cowboyed up” and finished the drive.<\/p>\n
On the last stretch up the pasture road past the canal gate onto the Mt. Alexander pasture, the yearlings were as well behaved as a group of Catholic school children, lined up and marching together with no side shows.\u00a0 Maybe they were just exhausted.\u00a0 I know we were.\u00a0 It was 2 PM.\u00a0 The weather had turned cold, sleet laced our hands and necks as we rode back to the horse barn.\u00a0 Waiting for us was a hot lunch and coffee, courtesy of the ranch kitchen.\u00a0 Thick sandwiches of grass-fed, bar-b-cued beef.\u00a0 Sweet revenge, some may have been thinking.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.sylvandale.com\/ranch_stories\/media\/Baby-calf-in-pickup-with-ed-150x150.jpg\" "\\"Baby")
<\/a>