Ranch Management Archives

Ranchlands Alumni, Where are they now?

December 20, 2021 Ranchlands

Over the years many people have come to work with us in various capacities and for various lengths of time. While their residence on the ranches may be relatively brief–just a few months or a year long–we often hear that they are impactful in shaping people’s attitudes towards work and life as they move on to the next chapter of their lives. We caught up with a few alumni, to see what they’re doing now, and how their time at the ranch has influenced their lives.

Fall Senescence

September 21, 2021 Brandon Sickel

We are now on the cusp of one of the great transitions to occur each year on the shortgrass prairie: the shift from the growing season to the dormant season, when life becomes subdued by the threat of winter.

Barbed Wire and the Frying Pan Ranch: A Shared History

July 23, 2021 Mary Emeny

How Joseph Glidden’s 1874 invention shaped an industry, and with it, a historical ranch in the Texas Panhandle.

Ranchlands Today

February 25, 2021 Duke Phillips

In the Unknown Certainty of Tomorrow It is November 1999. I am standing in the Chico Basin ranch corrals, watching […]

Horses and Helicopters

January 29, 2021 Brennan Cira

There’s definitely certain situations where the helicopter shines. But cutting pairs, sorting cattle, you can’t do that in a helicopter or a bike, that’s a horse job. The interesting thing is that people think it’s one or the other, but in combination, you can’t beat it.

Self Selection

August 6, 2020 Claudia Landreville

I was first introduced to the term “self-selection” in a barefoot trimming clinic in Australia about a year ago. The couple that were hosting the clinic, a trimmer and a vet, were starting a holistic rehab center in New South Wales in which one of the main focus points would be a Paddock-Paradise-style track system with a wide variety of planted herbs to provide the natural process of self-selection to their rehab horses. The thought behind this being that in the wild, horses (and other grazing animals) will seek out and choose to eat specific plants with medicinal properties to benefit their unique health, a process that most domestic horses don’t have access to, and which most horse owners compensate for by feeding an excess of supplements that blanket a wide variety of needs as a “cover all the bases” strategy.

Monitoring our Impact on the Land

October 7, 2019 Brandon Sickel

There is more than one way to know a place. There is more than one way to see a landscape. There is more than one way to understand land health. And there is more than one way to sense if a landscape is healthy.