Hollywood sometimes - well ok, most of the time ;) adds onto reality to make it seem glamorous. In Hollywood movies, ranchers live in gorgeous log houses. They have a few hired hands, and a maid or older relative in charge of the domestic end of things.
Let me tell you about the reality if ranching.
We don't live in log homes. At least not the ranchers around here.
My house is a 1929 model. Most ranchers and farmers here live in houses from 1920-1960.
We drive trucks. Mostly, they are older. Some work trucks around this area are from the 1980's, the newer ones maybe 4-5 years old. Mine is a 1998. My truck is my most useful tool. It hauls fenceposts and fencing tools when I am fencing. It hauls pails of grain, bags of mineral, blocks of salt, me and my dogs, tools, animal medicine, you name it. I can hook my trailer to it to haul livestock. It is dirty. :)
We work every day. 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Some days it might only be an hour or 2, like when we are planning a trip to the city. Then its just the bare neccesities checking animals, checking water, feeding dogs, etc. Some days, it might be 20 hours - like in Spring when its calving/lambing season and there is a Spring blizzard.
We work outside. A lot. In all kinds of weather. It's raining? Get out the raincoats! -30? better add another layer! +30? throw on some mosquito repellent.
We live in isolated areas. No running to the stores quick or grabbing a take-out quick. My closest grocery store is 38km away. The closest big city with big box stores is 100km. You better have a shopping list when you go!
We don't get sick days. Today Larry and I are both fighting a cold, but we had to get the last deworming of the sheep and goats done before the bucks and rams are put in with the does and ewes on Saturday. So we sucked it up and toughed it out.
There are no paid holidays, no guarantees of profit. It's like working the entire year and at the end of the year, rolling a dice to see what kind of salary you can expect - if any!. Maybe you need to pay your employer for you coming to work every day! OK, so we have control over some outcome of the dice through planning and managing our animals - making sure they are in optimum health with all that they need for optimum production. But things don't always go as planned.
We don't have control over commodity pricing, unless we do direct marketing, in which case its another skill to learn. But an outbreak of disease in the country can knock money off our animals, even if they are not the ones getting sick. A drought means higher feed prices, and inevitably a lower price for our animals as the market gets flooded with producers selling out.
It is an expensive business to get into - kinda like royalty, you are either born into it or marry into it!
We deal with death and illness. You have 3 kids that might get sick, I have over 200. They can and do get sick. We check every day, and treat as neccesary. Even so, sometimes our best efforts are not enough and the animal dies. Yes, it bothers me. Even after many, many times. I always feel like next time, I will do better. Next time, I will save it. Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. But I always keep trying my best.
Some days are glorious! Even if it is a day of hard work like branding day or vaccination day or building fence. There is a great sense of accomplishment with seeing a job well done.
Some days - not so glorious. We get tired and irritable. Some days we fight the elements and lose. We recently had quite a fair bit of ice rain which is turning winter chores into a hassle. When putting out round bales of hay as feed, we cut the strings off that hold the bale of hay together. Normally this is a quick task, but with the ice rain, the strings are stuck on one side of the bale. It takes 2x as long to unwrap a bale. And some days it is cold and miserable out when you have to cut strings.
strings pulled off
Strings stuck in ice
Or a winter water source will break down. Here in Canada on the Prairies, you have a few options for winter water: one is if there is enough snow cover, the animals can be trained to eat snow. It is not very efficient, but sometimes the animals might choose to eat snow instead of walking to water.
The second option is if you have a dugout, to chop a hole in the ice every day for the animals to drink. In the middle of winter, the ice is thick enough that cattle can walk on the dugout without falling through the ice. But in the spring, the ice might be getting thin and they can fall through so making the hole close to the edge as possible is ideal.
The third option is a watering station. These differ in size and price. Most require a power source for a heating element to keep the water thawed.
Some solar models use insulated troughs or a motion sensor system, but those can be quite pricey to install. Whichever system you have, it might require maintenance. The heating element might fail and the bowl freeze up. Dealing with frozen waterers at -20 is not really a lot of fun as it involves getting wet, taking your gloves off.... you get the idea.
Working livestock in rural locations where help is not often available, means working with your spouse or significant other. Imagine going to work with your spouse. Throw in some unpredictable animals, and you will soon find it a recipe for domestic disaster :) There might be some yelling and hard feelings. Deal with it. We need each other.
Kids are often working on the ranch (if you have them). Lots of kids choose to leave the farm because they see how hard their parents work, they feel resentful at having to help on the farm when their city friends don't have to do a thing, and get weekends off. So a lot of kids end up leaving for a 9-5 job because you make more money and you have free time. If you are not passionate about the lifestyle, you will not make it.
After lots of snow, it finally compacted enough that I can walk on top of the drifts without sinking in. Here is my track along with Remus's as we went to check the watering station one morning.
Remus enjoying his Livestock Guardian Dog deluxe pet bed. :) A piece of hay dropped by the tractor makes a comfortable nest. The horses, sheep and goats grazing on a rolled out bale in the background.
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