Shipping Day at West Ranch

Well, it was a whirlwind weekend, so I figured it was time to jump back on here and report all the activity.

I spent a little time looking back through my TikTok recently, and it’s been pretty quiet around here this year. Learning to balance my job at the school, West Cattle Company, ranch life, kids, and all the freezer issues we’ve dealt with has been a HUGE juggling act.

But one of my goals this year is to turn that around. So here we go!

If you remember from some of my older posts, we primarily operate as a cow-calf operation. We keep back some of our steers for West Cattle Company. Those are the cattle we birth, raise, feed, and finish ourselves—meaning we’re involved in all three chunks of that chain.

The majority of our calves, though, are sold through an online video auction and move on to the next phase of the cattle industry. Maybe they go to grass. Maybe they go to a feedlot. And because it’s a video auction, the buyer could be almost anywhere.

This year, our steer calves were headed to Arizona.

Shipping day is an ALL-HANDS-ON-DECK kind of day. And when you’re recruiting a crew, you’re also feeding a crew.

That usually means Brandon and I fall into our pretty traditional shipping-week roles: he spends days gathering cattle closer to the corrals, and I start cooking.

With the amount of acreage we’re covering, gathering isn’t a one-day job. It takes days to bring everything in—and then more time to double-check that you actually got everything.

Friday, I started with a giant batch of potato salad so it could sit for a couple days, plus prepping a huge crockpot of creamed corn.

Saturday, an 11-pound pork roast cooked all day before I shredded it around 9:00 that night for pulled pork sandwiches. While that cooked, I made a giant batch of breakfast burritos for shipping morning.

Some of our crew arrived Saturday evening, so once the burritos were finished, I went straight into tacos for everyone for dinner.

And dessert? Store-bought cookies. Sometimes you just have to know when enough is enough!

Sunday morning started at 5:00 AM.

Coffee brewing. Pork into the crockpot. Creamed corn into another crockpot. Breakfast burritos reheated. Two kids awake, dressed, and ready.

By 6:30, we were out the door.

We wean our calves at shipping, so the steer calves are still with their mamas right up until that morning. We gather the cows and calves from the pasture beside the corrals—mostly using ATVs and side-by-sides—and bring everybody into the corrals.

Then the sorting begins.

Mamas go one direction. Babies go another.

The calves are run through the scale house about ten at a time. The representative from the online auction is there representing the buyer and recording weights.

Because the buyer has already purchased a specific lot of calves, once everything is weighed, any overage has to be sorted off. The smallest calves—the ones we call the “peewees”—are pulled until we reach the correct number. Those calves are weighed again, their weight is subtracted from the total, and that’s how we arrive at the final average weight for the load.

Then comes the part that feels both incredibly fast and like the culmination of an entire year:

The check is cut.

The calves load onto the semi.

And off to Arizona they go.

Afterward, everyone heads back to the house. Some people finally get around to those breakfast burritos while I get lunch laid out, and then we spend the afternoon eating, visiting, and decompressing from a very busy morning.

And THAT is a little glimpse into shipping day at West Ranch.

One load down. Our heifers ship on the 18th.

And because apparently one giant ranch day wasn’t enough, we followed shipping day with preg checking on Monday.

More on that one next!