For my dad’s birthday last week, I made him a photo book filled with pictures I took of work on the PV Ranch in 2014. I thought it would be fun to share some of my favorite photos here for you to see. My dad has been riding for the same brand for nearly 50 years, and that’s a remarkable thing this day and age. He lives and breathes it.

If ever you wish to see a larger version of a picture, just click on it and it will open in its own window.

I LOVE this picture. You might have to enlarge it to see this yearling bull’s mineral mustache.

 

Branding and cutting stag bulls in the feedlot is a favorite early spring event.

 

View of the ranch buildings at headquarters on a shipping day in spring.

 

Joe, Nate, and Bridger counting cows out of the branding trap at New Dead Horse.

 

Cleve will be a top hand someday.

 

Lunch and a rest on the banks of Froze-to-Death Creek.

 

Cleve’s dad, Bridger.

 

Our New Mexican transplant, Jake. He’s gone back to New Mexico now. Come visit soon, Jake!

 

Tailgating! More often than not we haul lunch out to the crew.

 

The less glamorous side of a ranch job: laying bunk aprons in the feedlot.

 

Shagging large round straw bales in the field. These bales are gathered into groups, then loaded onto the semi and hauled to the feedlot, where they are stacked for winter feed and bedding.

 

The well at Horse Creek Crossing.

 

Preg-checking replacement heifers at South Butte Creek.

 

Those little black things? Cows’ ears. The PV cows are not only branded but earmarked as well, for identification purposes. If a yearling heifer passes her first pregnancy test, she is age-branded on the shoulder (she was branded with the PV on her hip as a calf) and the top half of her left ear is cropped. It’s like a rite of passage for a PV cow. The cows here are not individually identified (there are too many of them) but instead identified in age groups.

 

Trailing bred heifers to the Gillette pasture.

 

Beau and Kate riding pens for health in the feedlot.

 

The ranch donates use of its cattle for the Custer Ranch Rodeo. Here, Beau drags in a calf in the branding event.

 

These curious heifers are waiting their chance: the cowboys at the top end of the alley are sorting them for replacement heifers. The best are kept in the PV cow herd; the others are sold.

 

A foggy morning in the feedlot.