Herding to reduce depredation

Hilary and Andrew Anderson manage cattle and range using a combination of progressive range management practices, electric fencing, low-stress range riding and herding in southeast Montana. By the mid-2000s, they…

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Eat what your animals eat – curly dock

I cooked up some eggs with curly dock this morning. I wanted to share why I’m feeling grateful this spring for the plant, also called yellow dock or Rumex crispus, that many consider it a weed. It is such a welcome fresh green to break up the anonymous kale, cabbage and bagged spinach of winter, that I think it is worth celebrating.

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Getting started with birding

It takes practice to get good at bird identification, but it’s never too late to start! The COVID-19 induced pause plus the start of spring creates the perfect opportunity to get into birding. Even if you can’t go anywhere that’s ok – there are birds right out your window. Here are some resources to help you learn!

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A new kind of cowgirl

When I first moved back to my family ranch ten years ago, fresh out of college, I was plagued with insecurities. I had been around ranching all my life, the oldest of two daughters, and my parents were very egalitarian and encouraged us girls to do anything. Anything that is, but raise cattle. I could fumble through a fence repair, and obviously I could drive a stick shift, but I felt as though I would never learn everything I needed to from my dad.

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Keeping it in the family: My start down the path of succession planning

Last summer, I told my colleagues that I would be taking a sabbatical from work to develop a succession plan for my family ranch, a 300-head cow-calf operation in southern Arizona. “Succession plan” was such a nebulous term that I felt like I needed dedicated time just to figure out what it meant before I could create one. It was overdue. In 2013, one week before my son’s birth, my father had an accident while riding that could have easily killed him, and nearly did.

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Birds Got no Beef with Burger

Opening the pickup door and stepping out onto native grass, the sun begins to rise amidst the sound of the dawn chorus. I listen to the melodic tinkling of a Baird’s sparrow (my favorite song, and also set as my morning phone alarm); the downward whirl of the Sprague’s pipit (my ring tone); the buzz of the Brewer’s sparrows, the joyful couplets of the McCown’s longspur. The chestnut-collared longspurs are chasing each other in play, or fight.

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