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Tales from the O-NO Ranch 5-18-09

Mad Jack Hanks
Wellington, Colo.

I’ve never run very many cows of my own. Nope, the cows were always owned by someone else, and I was their caregiver. With the few cows that I have personally owned, I just never owned one of those special cows.

You know the ones I mean. If you’ve run cows for any length of time, there was one or more than one that just stood out among the rest. She seemed to always be in good condition. She wasn’t a bunch quitter or a fence jumper. She was always right there when you tagged her calf, but never once acted like she was going to freight train you because, well, just because.

You would always find her baby-sitting, not only her calf but many more. The other cows trusted her to watch their little ones because she could be trusted. Not every cow, I have found in my years on the range made good baby sitters or were even allowed to watch calves other than her own.



You didn’t find this favorite cow of yours trampling in all the range cubes trying to reach the back of the pickup. Nope, she would find her a place at the buffet and chow down.

One of the best things about her was she seemed to always breed back at the appropriate time and always have a good calf and most of the time, without any effort at all. You weren’t out there trying to push her back to her first born because she didn’t have a clue as to what had happened to her. As far as she knew, her backside had suddenly fallen off. You have seen heifers react like that; it would be funny if it didn’t take so much effort and time to get the hair-brained heifer to let her new baby suck.



I had an instance up in the panhandle of Texas where I had to rope an old sister and pull her calf out on the range. She wheeled around and ran over, not only me but her new baby as well, and then she runs off with my horse for a ways.

Gentle readers, it was just one of those days when you wished you worked at the Dairy Queen, and you weren’t out there messin’ with some ol’ stupid, irresponsible heifer or cow that their whole reason for being on this earth was to make your life miserable.

That’s why I always admired that good cow, the one that took care of business in a business-like manner. Mothers are mothers, don’t matter if they have two legs, four legs or eight legs or crawl on their belly. Some are good at what they do, and some are less capable.

I see moms in Wally World, at church, and other places and the good ones always seem to stand out above the rest. God done good when he created the female.

Like I’ve said before when God brought Eve to Adam to show him his new helpmate, Adam gasp, his eyes bugged out because of her beauty, and he exclaimed, ‘WHOA MAN! ” God said, I can live with that, we will call her “woman!” That particular verse is from Mad Jack, chapter four verse three if yer interested.

Stay tuned, check yer cinch on occasion, and I’ll c. ya.


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