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Ranchers.net

Well as many of you know, i'm a city slicker, but agriculture runs deep in my family and even though i'm not a farmer/rancher today, I still feel a deep connection to agriculture today.

Anywho, my step-dad grew up in South Central South Dakota, Gregory County to be exact and 20 years ago this spring, I got to take part in my first and only well, sort of round up. My Grandpa was losing his battle with cancer and my step-dad was making a nearly 7 hour one way drive from SW Iowa every weekend to spend time Grandpa.

Well in early May, just my step-dad and I made the weekend trip to Burke and this particular weekend was branding weekend. Grandma and Grandpa milked about 40 head of Holsteins, but they also ran over 120 cow/calf pairs and fed out all of the calves, I can still smell the silage pile to this day :D .

I was expecting a big praire round up, similar to the pictures that Jassy posted eariler today, boy was I disappinted to wake up and find all 120 plus pairs close to the milking barn and even more sad that I didn't get to help push the pairs in as my uncle had done all the work.

Anyway, all the calves were run through a table chute, which i'm sure made the job easy, but none the less, I was a little disappointed that it wasn't a true praire roundup.

Oh, two weeks later, I was back in Burke for my Grandpa's funeral.

Even though it wasn't a true "round up" those memories of that weekend still stick with me today and I wanted to share them with everyone.
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