No water for the cows! This is a disaster

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:01]That's stressful. Hey, Steve. Got a leak. Bring your backp.

[00:00:07]Well, howdy partner. What are you guys doing?

[00:00:10]>> Go shed hunting.

[00:00:12]>> More words.

[00:00:13]>> This is the only source of water here on the ranch. We run about approximately 300 mother cows. And uh we have roughly 6,000 acres uh total. And only about 150 of those acres are actually farm acres where we put up our hay. On that 150 acres uh we got really bad soil, not drink water. And so I only put up about 500 ton a year and I need 900 ton a year. So I'm buying 400 ton every year. Uh this year has been especially bad. Um, and I actually run out of hay and I'm having to get some from my cousin, um, which I have to replace this fall. We got to put up enough hay, um, for me and buy enough hay for me in addition to what I'm using right now um, from my cousin. The hay production here is uh, is pretty important for us.

[00:01:13]Um, it helps us run the cows through the winter time. And I'm trying to figure out ways to make the ground more productive than it has been. I'm doing some uh regenerative farming and and planting multiecies crops to get a little better soil health. Um hoping that our ground can produce more tons per acre. Uh so I don't have to buy quite so much hay. Okay, I'm looking at sprouts.

[00:01:42]Yeah, it's coming up.

[00:01:45]Little beardless barley. And I plant this about the 1 of April. And then I'll harvest it right before it goes into the milk, which is usually right after the 4th of July. And then I'll come back in and I'll plant a multi-ecies uh blend for soil health. It's got turnups and radish and kale and all that kind of good stuff. And it's really good forage for the cows. When they come and hit this in about December, they really like that multiecies stuff. And it's really good for the soil health. So, all in all, this field looks pretty darn good right now. This year, we have a little bit of a struggle with the drought. What the drought does, it makes it so the grass really doesn't grow very good, and we have to keep our cows in a little bit longer. We can't turn them out on grazing. But yet, the cows know, they know it's time to go out and graze.

[00:02:32]And what little bit of grass is growing, they really want to get out there bad.

[00:02:36]And so, nearly every day, my cows are breaking out. They're crawling through the fence, jumping the fence. The fences here, some of them are hundred years old. This ranch is 146 years old. So, some of these fences just aren't really great and the cows push through. So, I got to keep an eye on them. And it's it's been a really big struggle. And on top of that, when there's drought and not much water, it's harder to grow crops because I do rely on surface water out of Grape Creek to do some some irrigating. You know, my great grandpa come in and filed on Grape Creek. We still today own those water rights. a year like this year, there's just no water there. But that's some of the struggles that we have on these drought years, cows getting out and crops not growing. One of the things that we have to do every spring is we got to go out on the BLM and make sure that the water's running for the cows before we turn out. I was out there a couple of days ago checking on things. Things didn't look real great. I tried to do a little bit of a fix on it. I'm not sure what happened, but I got to go out and look at it again. I'm going to catch you up on what went on the other day while I head out there and we'll see what we find.

[00:03:51]We come out to get the water going for the cows for the spring grazing. So went up to the spring box, started the water down, shut off all the drains and found this leak here. This is actually a drain where it comes down off the hill here and the hill here. So this is a low spot. the slow spot where we're at. And um we've got a little leak that we got to fix so that we can get the water going for the cows.

[00:04:29]Get the clamps off. Save that piece. Put it back in there.

[00:04:36]Well, we didn't get much snow this year.

[00:04:38]So, these springs are fed off of the snow melt. There's no snow to melt. So, it's going to be very little water. On a good year, this water coming out right here would be blowing against that bank, but you just don't have it. You see how it just kind of keeps puking and stuff.

[00:04:56]This is the only source of water for 300 plus head of cows for 6 weeks.

[00:05:02]And that's not going to do 300 head of cows.

[00:05:09]Minimal damage done.

[00:05:17]And we'll shut the drain, let it pressure up, and send water to the water troughs.

[00:05:34]Well, this valve will send water down to the water trough right down here. I only want to crack it a little bit to send a little bit of water down there because it's way downhill. So, it creates a lot of pressure and the float valve actually won't hold all the pressure. So, we just crack it a little bit to send a little bit of water down to that trough and the rest of the water will head on down the country. There's three more trops that it has to fill up. So, we'll just crack it just a little bit.

[00:06:03]Oh, I hear it. Oh no, there's a leak.

[00:06:13]More work.

[00:06:17]Hey, Steve got a leak. Bring your back.

[00:06:22]I think the steel fitting going into the valve is just rusted through. Probably actually don't need a back coe cuz it's not very deep. We just need to move this piece of pipe out of the way. Replace that valve.

[00:06:38]Little tiny bit of water. That's been going 24 hours and it's not very full. That's stressful.

[00:06:49]That water trough is not going to water 300 head, especially if it won't even fill up in 24 hours. And it is the only water on this whole thing out here for 300 head of cows. We could not get any water to this water trough and we kept blowing the pipe up up above here because the pressure had built so much. So we we're plugged up in here somewhere. So, I'm thinking I might go get my 25gallon repurposed propane tank and uh pressure it up with air and come out and blow some air back up this line. See if we can't get a little more water coming down here.

[00:07:28]>> He's got he's got a cowboy.

[00:07:32]>> Well, howdy, partner.

[00:07:37]>> What are you guys doing?

[00:07:38]>> Find some sheds.

[00:07:39]>> Nice.

[00:07:41]How how is old axle?

[00:07:44]>> Silent was fine. As soon as I hopped on him, he freak out though.

[00:07:47]>> Well, I told you to lunge him.

[00:07:49]>> I did.

[00:07:50]>> I did actually.

[00:07:51]>> Oh, and he's still What do you do? A little crow hop. What's a What's a freak out?

[00:07:55]>> He just kind of took off.

[00:07:57]>> Oh, >> but saddling him. He didn't freak out when I threw it on him, though.

[00:08:02]>> Okay. Oh, >> yeah. We're going to go.

[00:08:06]Okay.

[00:08:06]>> Maybe rope a deer if you see one.

[00:08:09]>> Rope a deer.

[00:08:11]Good luck.

[00:08:12]>> Me and my cousin.

[00:08:15]>> Hopefully I don't get bucked up.

[00:08:45]I did it.

[00:08:49]If you can't tell by my shop, everything has its place. And that attachment is supposed to be in that corner.

[00:09:06]Found it. It wasn't in its spot, but I found it. Yeah, I built this. This just a piece of inch and a quarter pipe.

[00:09:12]Welded this little nipple on here. And then I've got this. You can hook air hoses up to it. You know, that's a little double male that hooks in there. And then I hook this in here.

[00:09:25]I just hook it up to the air hose. Shove that down the drain pipe. Then I wrap the duct tape on there to create a seal.

[00:09:32]You got to push that down on that on the drain pipe.

[00:09:42]Here's the drain pipe right here. Wait a minute. I don't want to do the drain pipe.

[00:09:48]Ah, balls.

[00:09:57]Problem is I think I'm going to have to take that part off though.

[00:10:18]Whoa.

[00:10:33]Hey, something come out. That little sucker right there is what we got out of there, you know, and it gets stuck somewhere and then a rock comes up against it or silt or moss, you know, it's a spring.

[00:10:51]anything gets stuck against that and then it just builds up and plugs up. But we've got that out. So maybe we broke everything loose and once the water gets down here from the spring, maybe we'll have water for the cows.

[00:11:07]Analopee have been in here.

[00:11:09]Oh yeah, way better water.

[00:11:15]That'll water cows. We come back out.

[00:11:17]The steam wasn't running very good. So, the other permites come out yesterday and they had to dig it up up here. They dug up the pipe, cut it in half, and then they blew it again and they got a bunch of stuff to blow out. Looks like now there's enough here to water a few cows.