Working Ranch April/May 2025

STORY AND PHOTOS BY CRYSTAL KULHANEK CORE 7 RANCH

3 a.m.

You lost a calf. Those who love you say it’s not your fault. They make some pretty good points too, ones you would have agreed with a couple of days ago - when the unspoiled hope of a fresh calving season stretched before you. The part of your brain that handles logic and taxes and factors the mineral servings for a pen of growing heifers might even agree with them, but in your gut, the finger of blame is still firmly pointing inward. You lost a calf. It’s 2:30 a.m. in the morning and spring in a part of this great country, where spring sure doesn’t equal tulips and bunnies. It’s frozen mud, cob-rough ground, and layers of thawing ice and hay. You’re checking cud-chewing mommas so big and round and ready that you’re not entirely sure how the calf hasn’t just fallen out yet. Your spotlight searches each one over and swears that tonight has to be the night… just like you’ve said for the past three nights. One more pen or one more hill. Wasn’t that little blue heifer over there getting close? You may even think, Nah, she’s really not that far along; she could wait for the 4 a.m. check… and then you remember. You remember what you lost. You lost a calf. Yet you found your heart, bruised, but firmly beating in the right place.

And so you check. Life isn’t promised an easy ride, and sometimes, we have to help it hold on and hang tough. Every frozen hoof print crackles underfoot as

96 I APRIL / MAY 2025 WORKING RANCH audited readers run 21 million head of beef cattle.