Question for 4 wheeler people

[Tap]

[Silver]

Because I have no intention of roping a 2200 lb bull (call me chicken, I'm ok with that), and would rather not spend the day walking home for 10 miles, I find the best/handiest way for those deals is a deal (cant remember what its called... medidart?) like a jousters lance. Got a spring loaded syringe in the end of it tied to a string. You scoot up to the animal on the conveyance of your choice and stab it in the butt. Said animal has the option of doing nothing or running off. Syringe stays in animal until payload is delivered, then pops out. There is about 150' of string connecting the lance to the syringe, and it even winds itself back up. Pretty handy really.

[Soapweed]

Back in the early 1990's, I was summering 200 head of yearling heifers about thirty miles from home. One afternoon, I hauled salt and mineral to these heifers and was looking them over. They all strung in to eat the feed, as the bunks were empty. There were sure four head that had footrot. It was already the middle of the afternoon, and it was thirty miles back to the ranch to get horses and my hired hand to help me rope and doctor these heifers. Then it was another thirty mile trip back to where the heifers were summering. Taking inventory, I realized that there was already a bottle of LA-200 in the pickup and a good syringe. Behind the seat there were two ropes.

The heifers were all crowded around the salt bunks, so I took one rope and slipped a loop on a heifer's neck. She spooked and took off, but I moseyed back to the pickup and drove easily up behind her. I was able to get one of the front tires of the pickup over the top of the dragging rope. This held her in place so that she could only go back and forth around the pickup. I was able to get the other rope on one hind leg and tie it off to the 2 inch trailer hitch ball. I drove slowly ahead until the rope came tight and drug the heifer until she went down. Using the rope that was on her neck, I tied her hind feet together which immobilized her until I could get forty cc's of LA-200 into her.

I turned her loose and tried it on the next heifer. That worked similarily, so I did it on the other two also. The whole endeavor probably took a couple hours, and the two ropes got scuffed up pretty bad before the job was done. I was kind of proud to get the four heifers all doctored by myself, without the help of a horse.

Not sure if this is what you were looking for in an answer to your question, Jinglebob, but it was done with a "four-wheeler" (pickup, that is). The concept of how well a rubber tire holds a rope when pressing it firmly against the ground is partly how our "calf trap" branding gizmos came about.

[HAY MAKER]

Four wheelers have a place on the ranch,roping cattle is not one of them,I guess I use mine for about everything else,not sure Im priveledged enough to know anyone that ropes cattle off a 4 wheeler
reading soaps response about roping heifers and doctoring em reminded me of the time or two I would have a cow needing attention aways from the pens,take my open stationed tractor and slip a rope other her head let her settle a bit then drive over the rope,take the end and tie it to the draw bar,drive slow ,she will follow................good luck

[Jerry H]

i have seen some folks here in this flat famer country roping and doctoring yearlings on a farmerwheeler
the prossess looked real simple to me
they cut the calf out of the bunch "on the run while scattering the rest"
then they tear up alot of grass or wheat while they run the poor calf half to death till it slows down enough that they can heel it with the rope tied to the back of the farmerwheeler
they get him on the ground and then they doctor it

the farmerwheeler comes in real handy the next day when they come back they can drag it as it's most likly DEAD from all the stress on top of being sick

however i have seen some of these cowboys/farm hands do the same thing ahorseback
so i guess it all comes back to stockmanship
if you can doctor one on a farmerwheeler and not hurt him more power to ya
as for me if ya'll see me riding one of things PLEASE shoot me off of it as i have complely lost my mind
until later
jerry

[porter]

I use a pneu-dart and 10cc of Naxcel. You can stand a good 30 ft away from cow and shoot her with the dart. Works well.

[PPRM]

Soaps Story reminds me of doctoring a Hiefer for Pink-eye....


I had them at a Cutting horse trainers, no Chute there. They had called me about thi one hiefer. I pulled up just after they had put the horses up. This one bigger guy that wieghs about 270 and all muscle says, "No Problem".....His dad had cowboyed...errr..buckarooed, LOL......A lotin Nevada.


Anyways. he ropes the hiefer in a corral. I can't remember if he dallyed on a post a bit or just bogged down, but at some point he flips the rope over her hip and then around her fronat and back behind her but. As she pulled she kinda snugged the rope until she either went down or we tailed her down......

LOL, I say I remember, but I seem to have forgotten a lot on this deal.....Anyways, granted he was big, but he used a lot of leverage and her pulling basically resulted in her tieing herself up more,


Pat

[Andy]

I ride the 4wheeler out to the pasture get off and walk up to withinn 30-50 feet and shot with the dart gun. Not real exciting but it works good and it is easy.

[Jinglebob]

Soap's story reminded me of this incident, that I put in my book.

Dad and the footsore cow
Once Dad and I were makin’ a quick trip thru’ the cattle, checkin’ on them and scattering some salt. Our country is not all that rough and you can drive a pickup ‘purt ‘neer anywheres! At least if you drive like the ‘ol man! Anyways, we found a cow down in the summer pasture that was awful lame. She had a big clump of mud on the lame foot, like she’d been soaking it in mud to try and make it feel better. I told Dad that if he’d take me back to the house, I’d get my horse and either bring her home so we could doctor on her or I’d rope her and give her a shot. He decided that it would be a lot quicker just to get a couple of ropes and some vaccine and we’d rope her from the pickup and tie her on to it and then doctor her. We were in the middle of haying and he wanted to do it the fastest way possible. Dad always was kind of a farmer type and never seemed to want to do much ropin’ off from a horse. He’d rope a cow in a shed afoot, to tie her up and pull a calf, but that was about all of his ropin’ skills. Maybe he’d never had a horse who worked a rope real good. I don’t know and still don’t! ‘Course he’d a been in his mid sixties to maybe seventy years old at the time this took place.
I gather’d up a couple of ropes and he got the vaccine gun and the vaccine. We drove down to the pasture and I got in the back end so he could put me up along side of her. I’d asked him earlier what we were going to tie on to, to hold her and he’d said that after I’d roped her to just let go of the rope and he’d drive up on it with the front tire and that’d hold her. I was skeptical, but knew better than trying to argue with him. I wasn’t old enough to stand a chance arguin’ with him and I wasn’t too sure I could out run him, if he wanted to win the argument by force, anyways. So I did as I was told. As soon as we take in after her, why you’d be surprised how fast that poor, ol' crippled up cow could run! But Dad must of had some cowhorse blood in his family tree, cuz’ he puts me up along side of her all right and I gets a rope onto her and let go and be damned if he doesn’t drive up onto the rope the first try and low and behold, it does hold her!
We get out to doctor her and she makes a run around behind the pickup and catches the rope on the back bumper and bing! Cuts the rope just like a knife. Well, we had another rope so we have another go at it and it works just like before. Maybe we had to drive a little faster and farther, but we get her roped again. Dad drives right up onto the rope on the next try, just like before. She takes a run behind the pickup again and cuts that rope in two!
In the process of all this chasin and rope cuttin’, we notice that she’s knocked the mud off from her foot and that she has a piece of plastic, well casing, stuck on her foot and that’s why she’s so lame. We seem to be out of rope anyways, so we go home and get a hacksaw and several other tools we think might help to try and remove this piece of casing. And scrounged around and found us another rope!
We go back and after a little longer chase and a few spilled loops by me, we get her caught again. Have you ever tried to rope and stay inside of a half ton Ford, goin’ across a rough pasture, bein’ driven by a mad, half-crazy old man before? This time we decide that if we’d get her on a shorter rope, she won’t be able to get to the back bumper to cut the rope, so somehow, we tie her on to the grill guard. We get her snubbed up fairly short and go to tryin’ to get this thing off from her foot.
While we are fightin’ with her to get the job done, she runs into the pickup on the passenger side several times and about halfways crawls up onto the hood. This didn’t make the ‘ol man too happy! I was smart enough to refrain from mentioning that she probably wouldn’t have done that to my horse!
We finally get the job done and turned her loose. The pickup has a broken mirror on the passenger side, the hood is mashed down pretty bad and the window is cracked and the passenger door has a big ol' dent in it! We’d ruined two ropes and got all this done in about 3 or 3 and 1/2 hours. Faster hell! Maybe thats one of the reasons I like to check cattle a horseback and still figure it’s faster and handier to use a horse when ropin’ livestock!

[Denny]

You would have a hard time here on a 4-wheeler getting them out of the brush but where there's a will there's a way.My 4-wheeler's are only 250 2 wheel drive so there best used for moving equipment from field to field or fenceing.No way would I rope anything off one.Beside's who would want to damn farmer's.

We were doctoring cows on thursday the pasture has 3 to 4 ft. tall grass there is a row of T-Posts from an old electric fence avoiding a chargeing cow my horse speared himself between the back legs I don't think Billy Etbauer could have rode him.all things worked out in the end but my neck and groin are still hurting.But the cow got doctored.

[Ben H]

[Cal]