Watch: moving cows on horseback in the Rocky Mountains

Jim Lynch-Staunton runs 900 cows on 16,000 acres (8,000 owned, 8,000 rented) in Southern Alberta, around 60 miles from the US border.

The herd calves in two months from the end of April, with calving heavily front-loaded, as 80% of cows will have conceived in the first breeding cycle.

This impressive statistic is down to Jim’s culling regime. Like many top ranchers, he is ruthless. Jim is in a slightly different position, however, as some of his bull calves will be bought and marketed as commercial sires by the Beefbooster company.

All are crossbreds – and the practice of crossbreeding is gathering fierce momentum in Canada, as the benefits of hybrid vigour in areas like beef cow fertility are realised. Jim needs perfect cows that will produce perfect calves.

She’s outta here

“If I have to look twice at her feet or udders, note that she’s excitable, assist her at calving or help her calf to suckle, she’s outta here.” Jim told the Irish Farmers Journal. “In big herds like this, the cow does the work. She’s only going to be in the crush twice a year – for a pregnancy test and pre-calving.”

By 28 April, 88 cows had calved. This was despite the fact that the official start date of calving for the 900-strong herd was 1 May. There were six inches of snow on the ground and the herd was in a 640-acre field, four miles from the yard.

During calving, the herd is checked three times daily. New calves are weighed, de-horned, genotyped and tagged. In these snowy conditions, hypothermia is the big danger. If the calf remains wet for too long after birth and fails to get a drink, it can be quickly fatal.

Trek

Any cows still to calve were to be moved two miles closer to the yard on the day I visited. Jim told me that the six of us would be able to separate those cows in less than 30 minutes without getting down from our horses – I was understandably sceptical.

When we arrived at the field, the bulk of the herd were located near the entrance, with around 60 animals spread across other parts of the field. Of these, the in-calf cows were steered back towards the main group.

Four of us formed a moving perimeter and squeezed the cows into a tight group, though which two of the cowboys combed and pushed cow-calf pairs toward the edge and beyond into the field.

Less than an hour and 15 minutes were spent in the cow field in total. This is a credit to both the strict selection for docile cows and the team’s handling skills. Everything was relaxed and I had been warned not to shout or make noise near the cows.

“The second the cow is frightened, she will look for an out. That is not what we want here. The cows respect the horse and we respect their personal space,” Jim said.