Tuesday, February 10, 2009

A few things you might see on a ranch

When I first moved here I found myself saying "What's that?" more times than I can count.  I've gotten better but still scratch my head wondering what some things are, homemade things are the worst... and we have a lot of "use what's on hand to make what you need" items around here.

One of the first things you might see is a gate, a cow, and some baler twine.  I think I pretty well covered all that in this one picture.




This gal was a bit nervous and backed off when I got too close, but cows are curious and they don't go too far before they stop and watch you.


And when you have animals you have feeders.  Pops moved this feeder from Black's Field into the horse pasture today.


Here's a close-up.  The feeders are mainly used for the bulls, and the horses when they are in a corral.



Then there's this thing.  Any idea what it is?  I never did figure it out and had to asked Hubby.  It's a "cow scratcher," the cows rub themselves on it, and sometimes it has medicated liquid in the top of it that runs down onto the cows as they scratch themselves.


These heavy logging truck tires are tied together so they can be used for smearing.  After having the cows in a pasture for awhile it gets covered in manure, you hook the tires to a tractor and drive 'round and 'round until the manure is smeared and smoothed down on the field.


And of course you'll see fields, pipes, old trucks (that still run) and a ton of hay.





Speaking of things that still run... you'll often see old pieces of equipment that surely must be abandoned.  But they're not, this thing still runs... sometimes.  It's a 1950ish (I'm guessing) combine for doing grain. 

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

very educational and interesting and great photography also..ab

Oma said...

The cow scratcher is something I have never seen. I think it is great for the cows, even cows want their itch scratched now and then. :)

Love Ya!

Jackie said...

The cow scratcher was new to me as was the smearer. And I think that our combine is from the 60's ;-)

David T. Macknet said...

Cool (particularly the cow scratcher)! Also: the pictures are very well done, with a nice mix of deep and shallow depth-of-field. Nice!

Anonymous said...

That combine looks like the one my parents have; it was my grandparents before that and I think they still use it. I haven't seen the smearer or scratcher before.