Fresh cows

I mentioned in an earlier post that we had fresh cows at our final sorting. So fresh that they had been living on pasture and hadn't even seen a horse or been kept in small pens until they were delivered Friday evening. Friday and Saturday some volunteers settled the cows. Basically riding through them, getting them accustomed to horses and being moved around.

Being a rookie, never really penned or worked cattle before, I was a bit intimidated. This was only my 3rd time sorting. And man were those cows a handful!

To give you an idea of how tough they were here are some stats. There were a total of 50 teams. Each team sorts twice. Only 5 teams had 2 clean go's.
Not that 5 teams got all 10 of their cows on both go's. That 5 teams got a qualifying run on both go's! BTW no one team got all their cows on both goes.

We had 4 partners each. My partners were Erin, RJ, Ben (Kimfer's uncle) and Holly.
My first go with Holly we had a qualifying run. My second go with Ben we had a qualifying run. Other than that my runs all ended up DQ.
It was tough but man oh man it was fun!

I received my disc with the sorting pics taken by the photographer. There were tons of pics so I chose a few to share with y'all :)
This is Scott, he's planning to move here from Alberta. He's a highly ranked cutter (or possibly penner, I'm not sure which)
I love this palomino mare of his. It was awesome to watch her work whenever she was in the pen! (she also has the most adorable sorrel foal)
This is Kimfer's uncle Ben. That great big buckskin he's on is named Bear. Bear is HUGE, but then again Ben is well over 6' himself.
Just want to point out that Ben has his hat on in both of these pics. Funny because he won a prize for the person that lost their hat the most. lol

Yours truly. I hated that cow! lol Poor Applejack and I worked our butts off trying to get her separated enough to move through the gate.
Us again, different cow.
Kimfer and her 4 year old Isis. By the end of the day Isis had had enough. But she did very good for a young'un that hasn't really done anything like this before. (other than the 2 other sortings Kimfer & I had gone to... with the "nice" cows lol)

Kimfer & Isis again, this pic must be from the morning. (K still has her coat on) Isis has only had about a year of riding on her.
Easing off the pressure. This cow is cooperating and peeling off the remaining cows.

After the sorting there was some team penning. There was a $2 jackpot that you could go in to give it a try and then there was a jackpot, winner takes all. You could go twice in the second jackpot so all in all I got to try penning 3 times. I'm not sure which try this was... I do know its not the one where I almost hit the dirt :o I really think willpower is all that kept me from falling. ("I will NOT come off in front of all these people and get run over by the dang cows!" lol)

Scott let Danica take his palomino in the penning. (Scott is boarding at Danica's mom's until he finds his own place here)
Erin penning. See I told you these were tough cows... cows shouldn't run this fast, its not natural! lol
Diane penning. I love this shot, but again cows shouldn't run this fast! :)

All photos in this post taken by Dany Rousseau.

If you're in the Saskatoon area and want to contact him I can give you his number.