Mustering to Wean (part 1)

My horse Menthol

Art took a back step this week with helping Clint who has his cattle here on agistment. For thoes who don't know what agistment is, it means that cattle belonging to someone else are grazed on our property and we charge the owner money per head per week.
Clint then pays us to help him muster and work his cattle. This week he weaned is calves, which consisted of mustering all the cows and calves into the yards, drafting the calves off their mothers.

....see any cows?

When mustering we have to make sure that we get every cow and calve in the paddock this is referred to as getting a paddock clean. Lucky that St Clair is very hilly as this is handy to get a bit of a birds eye view of the paddock and see where the cattle are. As you can see in the above photo Menthol and I are using this to our advantage.

Found the stragglers 

We mustered and then counted them and found that we were about 20 odd short so had to go back around and find the stragglers. I haven't been on a horse for a few months and the first day in the saddle after a long spell is always hard as I get a hell of a sore bum and a second trip is a for want of a better expression , a pain in the a..se.... but at least this time I am being payed, a very rare thing when you work for your self on the land.

Closing the gate

It was quite late in the day by the time we found the last of the cattle as they were nicely planted at the very back of the paddock and they took a bit of finding. Then it was a walk of about 5k's back to the yards. The photo below shows the cattle crossing the creek on their way to the yards and sun has gone down.
It was just light enough to yard then. But the high light of the day was walking the cattle into the yards with the most perfect full moon rising out of the gap between two hills right in front of the cattle. What a site!! (sorry no photo as camera not good enough.)

Going towards the yards at dusk

To be continued....