A Day In The Life of a Ranch Hand During Calving Season: Part I – Night Checks

11:50 PM: I groan as I roll over to shut off the alarm on my phone, playing music way too cheery for this tired young lady after only 2 hours of sleep. I rub my tired eyes as I sit up out of my warm bed, exposing my bare arms to the cold air that fills the room from the cracked window. I quickly bear crawl around the room, grabbing the barn clothes I left out just for moments like this. When I’m fully dressed in sweatpants, sweatshirt, Carhart jacket, stocking cap, gloves, and my all-important Muck Boots, I grab my flash light, bracing myself for the cold that awaits, I close my eyes behind my glasses and head outside to the barn next door.

12:00 AM: I walk into the corral to find the heifers all comfortably laying down in the clean straw. Careful to not wake them, I walk around the edge of the corral, checking to see if anyone has started labor. Most night checks, I simply find sleeping heifers, but tonight, I hear grunting coming from inside the barn. As I head inside, I spot a heifer lying on her side with two little feet coming out of her. Since I have seen both front feet and they are coming out pointing up, I know all is good so far. I head back into the house and will check on her in thirty minutes.

12:30 AM: As I am walking up to the barn, I hear a low bawl and I know that she has calved because she must be talking to her baby, it’s a different kind of bawl than normal. I walk in and see the heifer standing over her baby, licking it clean and talking to it. All is in order and Mom is doing her job, so I leave them to be until the next check in an hour and a half.

The night goes on like this for the next 7 hours, someone checking every two hours between my fiancé and I. We have been doing this now for a month and a half, but oddly enough, even though we are tired, there is still nothing more precious than a happy, healthy calf, wobbling over to mom to get its first milk. We love what we do and I’m not sharing a day in the life of a ranch hand to get your sympathy, I just think it is important to share our story and let people understand what happens on farms and ranches, day in and day out. Then all my friends back in the Twin Cities and beyond can see what it means to live on a ranch in McLaughlin, SD.

So I am not going to be a dairy farmer... at least for now.

When you were litte, what or who did you want to be? What kept you up at night, too busy dreaming to sleep?

Now take a moment, did you accomplish that dream? Are you that person? Are you still dreaming?

"Flicka" came out when I was in 6th grade. If you have never seen it, I highly recommend it. It's the story of a girl, who lives on a horse ranch and falls in love with this wild horse. (There's more to the story so here is a link to IMDb for more info: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0434215/.)

I saw this movie and that is what I wanted (only I wanted cattle, not horses). I wanted beautiful scenery, a beautiful man (a cowboy of course), beautiful cattle, a couple beautiful horses and beautiful sunrises. I drempt of minimal people, minimal profits, and idealy minimal snakes. But somewhere along the way, the world stepped in. I thought of careers that were more financially fit, more sensible, more stable, more... someone else.

Then I found the dairy industry. It was a job where I could have beautiful cattle and in some cases beautiful scenery. And I love dairy, I do, don't get me wrong, but... well, it's hard to explain, even to those closest to me. (For the sake of this blog post, I will not go into the details, that will be for another time.)

When I graduated high school, my friends would always joke that I was going to head off to South Dakota, find my cowboy who had a ranch, and never come back. I would laugh and say no I'll be on a dairy, but in the back of my mind, I would think back to Flicka.

Mobridge, SD. Not far from McLaughlin

No, life is never as glamorous as in the movies, but growing up, I spent my days in the pasture with our beef cows. It was my happy place. So started in Janurary of 2017, after my December graduation from South Dakota State University with degrees in Dairy Production and Speech Communication and an Animal Science minor, Nick and I will be heading to McLaughlin, South Dakota. We will both be ranch hands for a family owned ranch. I will spend most of my days with the cows, Nick with the corn and some days with each other.

McLaughlin, SD

So, no, I am not going to be a dairy farmer... at least not for now. I am young and alive and I would not be me if I never gave my dreams a try.