Terrrain and ranch work around Medicine Bow, Wyoming (Big Horn, Elk Mountain: fit in, for sale)

[Laurean]

Hi,

I am a writer, working on a book about a fictional town near Medicine Bow, Wyoming. The story includes a 7500 acre cattle ranch. Could someone desribe ranch duties, chores. What do cowboys do every day, say from Spring through Fall. My book will start in March and end in October.

And please describe the scenery, terrain, (flat land with surrounding mountains?) maybe even a few landmarks, store, restaurant, lakes, mountains, etc. around the Medicine Bow area. I have never been farther west than Missouri, so you see how much help I need.

What about trees? Are they scarce? And is the ground rocky? Flat? The hero in my fictional story had a father who died in an accident during a blizzard. He was thrown from his horse and his head struck something. I had originally used "a tree root", but now I wonder if "a rock" would be more realistic.

In my story the 24-year-old heroine is escaping her devisive stepmother in Colorado. So she finds an ad for a ranch hand job in Wyoming. Through a misunderstanding, her new boss thinks she's a guy. So in order to get the job, she disguises herself as a man. Of course her cover will soon be blown. Her mustache will come unglued, and so will her boss.

I need all the suggestions, comments, and help I can get from you Medicine Bow experts. Thanks!

[jdavid93225]

Well, I'm certainly not a Medicine Bow expert, but from what I've heard about the area, it's basically high plains, and mostly barren. There are some mountains that are visible from there, most notably, Elk Mountain, as I recall. As far as landmarks go, "The Virginian" hotel is probably the most notable, followed by the railroad depot. The town was the setting for the novel of the same name as the hotel, "The Virginian." Check out this link in Wikipedia for a little more info:

Medicine Bow, Wyoming - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

You can also see some pictures of Medicine Bow at this site:

Panoramio - Photos of the World

Don't forget, you also have the City-Data site to get information from:

http://www.city-data.com/city/Medicine-Bow-Wyoming.html

I hope these links help you to find the information you are looking for. Everything I know of Medicine Bow, I've learned from these sites. Perhaps there will be someone else who can give you a lot more information than I can. Good luck on your story.

[NVDave]

OK, some general information:

- The area around Medicine Bow is high plains rangelands or "alpine desert," with trees occurring only on mountain slopes or in creek bottom lands. Away from sources of water, all you have are grasses and forbs.

- It has its share of rocks, usually on slopes where the soil will erode and leave larger rocks behind.

- You can use Google Maps' satellite view to get a look at the lay of the land. You'll see that it is mostly arid flats interrupted with hills and ridges, creeks and so on.

- If you want trees, you're most likely going to have to go west up into the mountains. The trees down near the bottoms will be willows, perhaps some cottonwoods.

- 7500 acres in that country won't support a whole lot of cattle. Just from having driven by, I'd reckon that down on the flats in that area, you're going to green up in late May, see your first snow by October, and you're likely looking at 50 to 60 acres to the AUM. So on the flats around the town, 7500 acres divided by 50 ac/AUM gets you 150 AUM's. If you're talking of running those cattle year-round, you'll have to have some hay ground in that 7500. Let's say you have 300 acres of hay ground. Let's be generous - let's say you have 500 acres of bottom land hay ground, leaving 7000 acres of rangeland. 7000/50 = 140 AUM's. Let's divide that by six months (May, June, July, August, September, October) and we get (drum roll please) 22 head of cattle. The bottom land hay ground might produce 2 tons/acre of meadow hay, so call that 1,000 ton of hay. If you're going to have to feed that to over-winter the cattle, reckon on 50lbs/hay/day - you might be able to feed 200 head over winter with that hay, so you'd have ample hay and be able to sell some.

Methinks you need to increase the size of the ranch if you're planning on having it support a family, much less a hired man.

Most of what cowboys do isn't riding and moving cattle. There's cattle doctoring, there's haying, fixing fences, fixing buildings, corrals, machinery, caring for horses (altho in that country, you could move cattle from a four-wheeler cheaper than a horse)....

A 7500 acre outfit in that country tho, probably won't make enough to employ someone. It would be run by the owner and his family, and they'd better have a job in town to boot.

[Laurean]

Thank you. You've given me a lot of detailed information here. So how large would a ranch need to be to need 10 hired hands? And how many head of cattle could 10 hands take care of? Including all the other ranch work, hay baling, etc.?

I thought 7500 acres was a large ranch, but would something a lot larger be feasible?

I want this book to be based on factual information and you have provided a lot. I will certainly use what you've given me.

[Laurean]

Thanks for the pictures David. Hey Dave and David, I just had a brainstorm. What if I reverse it and the heroine moves from Wyoming to Colorado instead of the other way around? How many acreage and cattle would be needed to have 10 hired hands? I'm sure Colorado pastures and foliage are a lot more dense than those in Wyoming.

[NVDave]

Originally Posted by Laurean

Thank you. You've given me a lot of detailed information here. So how large would a ranch need to be to need 10 hired hands? And how many head of cattle could 10 hands take care of? Including all the other ranch work, hay baling, etc.?

I thought 7500 acres was a large ranch, but would something a lot larger be feasible?

I want this book to be based on factual information and you have provided a lot. I will certainly use what you've given me.

10 ranch hands? Wow. You're talking about a pretty large operation. 7500 acres in a western ranch is small. Easterners are impressed with "thousands of acres." Westerners are impressed with "thousands of head."

Some background: In the west, we worry about "AU's" or "AUM's" in measuring the size of a ranch - animal units (how many head of cows it can feed year-round) or Animal Unit Months (how many cows X months on the pasture/range).

For example, when you get a Forest Service or BLM grazing lease, it is for "XYZ AUM's" for a particular type of livestock (cows, sheep, horses), for a particular alottment, with a specific turn-out and bring-in date. BTW -- when you see these ads for western ranches that say "XYZ acres of BLM" - that's fraudulent advertising. You don't own that ground. You get to graze the grass off those acres in accordance with your grazing lease terms. The grazing lease is specified by AUM's - not by acres. You don't control those acres of grazing lease; all you can do is take the grass, subject to availability.

In the west, the best ground is the riperian ground, ie, where there is water from a stream/creek/ditch/spring/etc or sub-irrigated pasture. If this is relatively flat and produces well, this ground will be used for putting up hay. If a ranch doesn't have a base of hay or stored forage for winter time, they'd have to buy hay to over-winter their stock. There are cattle operations that ship all the cattle at the end of the season, so they don't have to feed in the winter, so that is an option as well. It doesn't pay as well as being a cow-calf producer, but it certainly is less hassle than trying to feed in the middle of winter and chopping the ice out of water holes, troughs and so on in our sub-zero weather.

So the riperian ground, the irrigated ground -- might support a few cows per acre for a month, but when you get to the dry rangelands, you're now talking 10's of acres per cow per month. The quality of the feed goes down very quickly, and so to support 300 (much less 1,000) head of cows, you're talking 10's of thousands of acres of rangeland very quickly. In Nevada (where we used to farm), it was not unusual to see BLM grazing alottments of over 100,000 acres - and that would support maybe 300 cows from only June until September.

10 hands? Let's start from the small end to give you an idea of the size. A "family" ranch -- ie, a cow-calf operation that would bring in $30K+ in net proceeds (in a good year, and this is shaping up to be a lousy year due to various factors) would need about 300 cows. Again in Nevada, we reckoned on a net:net profit on a cow-calf outfit of about $100/calf that was shipped.

So much for the idyllic notions that cattlemen are "barons," right? It is a rather low-margin business, and the only way you make any money is if you inherited or married the land.

Anyway, somewhere between about 300 and 1,000 head (depending on your facilities), you get into enough work that family, friends and neighbors can no longer help you get through it all and you have to start hiring. Most of what the hired help will do in the summer will be haying, fixing equipment, moving cattle for medical/breeding/weaning purposes.

Come winter, the cattle are typically in on deeded ground, and now you have to feed them hay or silage. The larger the operation gets, the more automated this tends to become - you see ranches increasingly using equipment to feed in the winter any more.

To employ 10 people, plus the boss... I've gotta reckon that you're up to something like 2,000 head, with substantial hay ground (and the hay will now have some alfalfa to it, not just pasture grasses), perhaps some corn or barley for extra winter feed value.

Let's say that we're on halfway decent range, and we can get 10 acres to an AUM. Let's say that you turn out in May and come in by September 30 - so that's five months. 2K cows * 5 months = 10,000 AUM, * 25 ac/AUM, we're up to 250,000 acres. The rancher doesn't need to own all this - if he can obtain USFS, BLM or private grazing leases, he'll move the cattle around.

OK, so let's reckon how much hay ground we need. Let's be generous, because a good ranch would want to have a bit more hay than they need. The cows will be brought in off range by the end of September. The calves will be weaned off, getting ready to ship in October. If a rancher is breeding to calve in March, by the end of October is a a fair expectation to ship the calves at about 450lbs or thereabouts. The cows will have been bred in July for a March drop, so when they come in in September, they're going to be run through the chute for "preg checking." More on that in a sec.

The cattle need to be fed - often, this can be done on the aftermath on the hay ground. The cattle will need hay from, oh, late November to late April. Let's plan on six months of feeding. That's probably more than they will need, but if you have an early winter, or late snow, and you don't have the hay available, you're screwed.

A cow will need at least 35 to 40lbs of OK hay per day in winter, maybe less if it is good quality hay, or the cows are being supplimented with corn or barley to add energy to their diet. Let's use 35lbs/day as a rule of thumb: 2,000 cows * 35lbs/day = 35 tons of hay per day - that's more than one double-trailer truckload. Actually, that's a triple-trailer truckload of hay per day that has to be fed.

Let's say we're planning on 170 days of feeding; we get to just under 6,000 tons of hay. That's a whole lot of hay.

The best hay yields in Wyoming would be over 5 tons/acre, but that's in the southeast corner of the state. A more realistic estimate at higher elevations like Medicine Bow would be 3.5 to 4 tons/acre (due to the shorter growing season). 6,000 tons/4 T/a = 1,500 acres of hay ground. If this is irrigated ground, this would be taken in two cuttings - probably one in early July, the other by the end of August.

Right there, with the hay ground, I can keep five guys busy for four weeks of the summer if we can assume big-capacity equipment.

So what are we up to here? 1,500 acres of deeded hay ground. Might as well round that up to 2K acres of deeded ground or more, with 1,500 usable. You're talking of 250,000 acres of grazing ground if we're talking poorer quality ground like the area around MB. If the ranch has good quality sub-irrigated pastures along riperian areas, you could cut that 250K acres down to perhaps as little as 30K acres, plus the hay ground. But that's a guy who owns very premium ground, probably a ranch that goes back to the 19th century and has been kept in the family.

A ranch that big would probably be using AI, BTW, which is a whole 'nuther chapter in cattle management. Ask if you want the gory details. It involves putting one's arms inside cows... more than once.


Here's a link to a larger ranch north of where I am:

Padlock Ranch - About Us

The ground there is much better than the ground around Medicine Bow. There's a reason why the Indians fought like they did to keep the area on the east side of the Big Horn Mountains; it is lush grazing land by comparison to the areas further east in Wyoming, or in the south/southwest of the state.

BTW -- if you call or chat up a rancher for information -- here's a tip: Don't ask "how many head do you have?" In western cattle culture, that's the height of rudeness. It is like asking city folks "So, what's your paycheck say?"

[NVDave]

I noodled around a bit on the web to find an example of a large ranch in Colorado:

Western Land Sales - Wyoming Ranches and Wyoming Farms For Sale

OK, you're seeing a 700 cow outfit there... which they've cut back to 250, with a claim that they're doing it "for the wildlife." This is probably a half-truth - it is more likely that they've had a drought that has reduced their carrying capacity.

At $19 million and only 700 cows, here's what I'm speaking of when I say the only way to pencil one of these outfits is to inherit the land or marry it. 700 cows doesn't pay the bills on a $19 million outfit. No how, no way. You'd have to come into this ranch with, oh, at least $17 million in cash and finance only $3 mil to have a note small enough to pay for it with the cows.

Remember, that $19 mil is just the ranch - not the cattle. Let's say that cows are cheap at $800/head. 700 cows * $800 is another $560K, plus let's reckon you're going to have to breed with all bulls while the cows are up in the high country, so we're looking at another 30 or so bulls. Let's call those $3K/head, so that's another $90K. You're into this outfit for another $700K in cattle and various things on top of the price of the ranch. Call it over $20 mil.

[Laurean]

NVDave,

All these figures and statistics have my head spinning. In my story the ranch has been passed down for three or four generations, back when they staked claims. If I cut my number of hands to five and keep 700 head of cattle, would that work? This ranch owner will be well-to-do. And the ranch will be mostly self-supportive. Baling hay, composting their own horse manure for their own use and to sell. What other ways can a ranch cut its overhead?

So...now I've switched to an area around Steamboat Springs, (northeast) Colorado. Can I get by with less acreage per head than I would need in Wyoming, since the grass is much thicker?

This book is suppose to be a simple romance, but I like detail. Makes it more interesting. But, I don't want to get too bogged down that I lose the gist of the story. Which is about a young woman who is running away from her devisive stepmother who tries to wed her to the obnoxious neighbor. When she calls her prospective employer, her voice is hoarse from a cold. He thinks she is a man. When she tries to explain, he cuts her short. She has no other alternative than to dress the part. But, somewhere in the story her mustache will come unglued. And will it ever hit the fan!

What I need to do is state a realistic number of acreage and cattle, and the number of hands it would take to run the operation. I'm having trouble putting all this in my head. You certainly know your facts. I can tell you are experienced. Either that or you are a mathematical whiz! Probably both.

Please simplify this for me. Thanks, Dave. You are amazing.

[NVDave]

I think you mean northwest Colorado when you mention Steamboat Springs.

I don't know the country around Steamboat other than it is absurdly high value real estate. From what little I've paid attention to ranches around that area, most all of the ranches appear to be making at least as much from running guided hunts and recreational activities as running cows. That's usually a pretty good indication that running cows isn't all that profitable in the area, because many ranchers consider dealing with guests to be something of a pain in the neck.

There are places in Montana where the numbers would work out better, and there are places in Idaho where the numbers work out. Certainly there are plenty of places in the Dakotas, Nebraska, etc where the numbers work easier.

In the intermountain west, tho, the numbers for what you want require a pretty big operation, and there's few of them left that could put together numbers like that - and most of the reason why are the changes in grazing operations on USFS or BLM alottments that have been forced on ranchers by environmentalists who want to eliminate grazing on public lands.

Ranches are pretty low overhead operations. Let me amend that: ranches run by ranchers are low overhead operations. Too many ranches any more are bought by city slickers like hedge fund managers and Hollywood types as their own private playground. You can see it in the real estate listings for ranches all over the west. When you read a listing for a ranch and they don't mention how many cattle they've been running on the ranch recently, you know that it isn't being sold to a rancher, it is being sold to people who have little to no intention of running cattle.

#1 way for a rancher to cut his overhead is to eliminate labor. That's the biggest issue in your story line that I'm having a hard time fitting into the numbers. A 2,000 cow outfit running 10 guys is a very generous rancher indeed. Most ranchers I know would be looking to lay off at least five of those guys come winter - but for the problem of finding five guys to hire again come spring.

Finding reliable labor on a farm or ranch in the west is the single biggest problem for any farmer or rancher. Most of the people that used to show up at our farmgate in Nevada were quite obviously meth tweekers or drunks. I wasn't going to put up with these people on our equipment, and I would rather run myself into the ground (which I did) rather than hire a wreck waiting to happen.

On too many ranching operations, you get these guys who show up wanting to do nothing but ride. Their motto is "if'n it can't be done a-horseback, I ain't doin' it." Well, a rancher can't put up with this sort of thing, so down the road those guys go. A ranchhand has to be able and willing to do anything - from wrenching on tractors and trucks, to putting up hay, to mucking manure, fixing or putting in fences, etc. The time spent on horseback, doing the sorts of things that people think cowboys spend all their time doing - is a scant minority of the actual duties of a hired hand anymore.

Second way ranchers lower their overhead after eliminating as much labor as possible is to use old equipment. Sure, it is really nice to have shiney paint on the tractor. It is far better to have a tractor (and other equipment) that is used, easy to find parts for and paid for. You see some really, really old, clapped out equipment on ranches. There was no new equipment on our farm aside from the pickup truck and gooseneck flat-bed trailer. And those weren't anywhere near as expensive as most people would think - when we were done buying those, the dealers were well happy to see the last of us, 'cuz we didn't leave much profit in the deal for them.

I don't mean to squash on your story line, but most gals trying to pass for men on a ranch or farm would be spotted pretty quick. Women just won't have the physical strength of men, and there's lots of brute-force, nasty jobs on any farm or ranch where the employer will assume that just about any hand worth their pay is going to be able to pick up something that weighs 120 to 140 lbs. And when a hand can't do that... it is going to raise eyebrows...

[Laurean]

NVDave,

If Colorado isn't feasible, my next choice would be Montana. What part of Montana? I can cut the hired help to 5, but will I still need to run 2,000 head of cattle, or should I cut that, too. Again the big question: How many acres for 5 hired hands?

I know what you mean about getting good help. My husband used to farm. We ran into a lot of trouble with workers who didn't show up the next day. They either partied or doped all night.

The gal in my story will be discovered early on. Maybe her run into problems while trying to change a tractor tire could make her boss suspicious. Or trying to throw hay bales up on the truck. Alas, when he does discover the truth, and is fit to be tied, his grandmother will fall and break her leg. He will need someone to care for her. So the gal will move into the house and take over household duties and caring for the grandmother. That should get the story moving.

Thanks for your quick replies.