🔵 By Matthew Boivin. Photo by lauragrafie.
There’s a lot of talk in prison about how much “harder” doing time is in any other state than Arkansas. I hear statements like, “Our work release is harder than this”, or “Doing time in Arkansas is watered down and nothing like …” wherever. True or not, those statements all boil down to the level of chaos (or lack therefor) inside any given unit. No matter what prison in what state, there are always men who thrive on and seek to create chaos in a distorted view that the level of violence a man creates is somehow a measure of his manhood. Whether that belief is a perverted version of America’s “Warrior Society” or a vain attempt to live up to a twisted ideal of a Hollywood-esque prison lifestyle of violence and torture, that belief pales in comparison to the violence and chaos possible when working with these rangy cows. We were preparing for a post-Thanksgiving week of moving cows from one unit to the other. Our herd had a combined total of 149 open cows and first-year heifers that didn’t get bred. That number was too high, so the administrations decided to send our open cattle away and get heifer calves in return. That dropped our herd count significantly, but creates a second crop of calves for the Beef Herd. We’ll keep the winter crop and the other unit will start a Fall Crop.
That just means full-time calf work for us, but makes good sense. On my future ranch, if a cow isn’t carrying a calf, she’s a drain on my resources. She will make a quick trip to a sale barn or a butcher shop – whichever pays more. Hard work, hard decisions, and hard actions are the cornerstones of a good ranch. By those standards, ranching on the prison Beef Herd is about as hard as it gets, in the truest form of the word.
The cattle work was supposed to start the Monday after Thanksgiving, but as with all things in prison, it changed. That change gave us some much needed time to prepare. Whiskey and I were moving some cows back to their pasture when the first bit of random chaos caught us. I kept him under saddle every day to get his mind focused on work, even if we didn’t do horse work that day. One day, I saddled him and rode him into the pasture with the bulls just to let him stand hobbled in place for hours. He was shaping up into a good horse which made it all the more painful when the chaos found us. We were walking through a patch of thin woods we moved cows through a hundred times without trouble. It was just Whiskey and I in the woods; the other two guys were on the road walking to the office while I went to get a count of cows in a different pasture. Whiskey’s feet were looking good after a much-needed trim and fresh shoes, so the tell-tale sound of metal hitting metal made me cringe. He stumbled once and when he stumbled again trying to recover his balance, I knew he was in trouble. I didn’t even bother to look down. That stumble told me all I needed to know – Whiskey was hurt! I jumped off him and led him to a fresh-mowed clearing near a gap into the pasture where we were headed. When he stepped out of the undergrowth, I could clearly see a long white gash on the front of his pastern and arterial spray gushing out near his heel bulbs. Instinct kicked in, and all I could think about was saving my horse. I snatched off my state uniform shirt and yelled for the other guys. By the time they got there, I was wrapping Whiskey’s pastern with my shirt hoping to staunch the blood flow. I sent one to find a supervisor for the trailer and asked the other one to help me. I ripped the leather tie-down straps off my saddle for a makeshift tourniquet and used the other one to add pressure to my shirt bandage. With the first bit of rudimentary care finished, I led a limping Whiskey to the road to wait for the trailer.
Once we were at the side of the road, I snatched my saddle off him, soothing him for the brief minutes it took for the trailer to show up. We loaded him into the trailer and took him back to the office where we could do a little better. I ran to the medicine room for supplies while one of the other guys ran to get a halter so we could pull Whiskey’s headstall off. While we were off to our different tasks, the supervisor was on the phone getting clearance for an emergency trip to the Veterinarian. I grabbed some gauge pads, paper towels and Coban wrap to get him ready for a 20-mile trip to the closest vet. As soon as I pulled my formerly all-white now all-red shirt off the wound, the blood started spraying again. I showed my helper how to pinch the artery behind Whiskeys tendon with a thumb and forefinger which I used toe paper towels to clear the clots away. I packed fresh gauge into the wound and used the wrap to hold it all in place. When that was done, I retied the tourniquet and wrapped it, too, so it didn’t come loose. We finished getting him wrapped up about the same time our supervisor finished getting approval. We loaded Whiskey into the road trailer, and the supervisor high-tailed it to the vet. He sent word later in the day that Whiskey would make it, and we turned in soon after. The next day, our supervisor told us the story of the vet going into high gear once he pulled that tourniquet off. The vet gave Whiskey a big shot of Ketamine and performed surgery in front of his office where Whiskey laid over. Afterward, the vet told our supervisor the tourniquet wasn’t good because it could cause a bowed tendon. Be that as it may, a severed artery can cause death, so I was okay with the trade-off. Surgery can correct a bowed tendon, but I have yet to see a surgery that can revive a horse lying dead in a trailer.
I was focused on saving Whiskey’s live – we can sort out the rest later. With Whiskey still at the vet, we went searching for what cut him. We followed the blood trail back to the hole and saw a piece of stainless steel sticking out of the ground. Of course, it wouldn’t budge when we tried to lift it by hand so we dug around it a little with a shovel to put a chain on it. The tractor we used lifted its back wheels off the ground pulling against that chain to no avail. Whatever it was buried there would take more work to get it out. We spent the next thirty minutes using the front bucket of that tractor to dig up what was on old institutional laundry washing tub. It could have been buried there in the 70’s for all we know and just finally worked its way to the surface. The stainless steel cover was poking through the ground and Whiskey had the misfortune to place his foot so that It slid INTO the washing machine, slicing him like a knife on his way out. Good for him it didn’t slice a tendon. We hauled the machine off and filled the hole hoping to prevent that from happening again. Hurt horse or not, the work won’t wait so we moved out the next task: getting ready for the shipping truck. Over the holiday weekend, we weighed and sorted all our calves, separating the steers for transfer. We wound up with 154 steers averaging 460-pounds at their first weighing. These will be weighed again in two weeks to calculate average daily gain and sold after a third weighing. The average daily gain and weight class will affect selling price, but in today’s market at roughly $1.44 per pound, the prison is looking to gain at least $99,000 from the sale of the steers alone. We’ll sell the little ones later.
Loading the steers was no problem and we averaged almost 80 per trip in the shipping truck. It was pretty quick work over two days. Once the steers were gone, it was time to work the open cows, and that little task let all kinds of chaos into our day.
The first load of cows got on the truck pretty easy, but Friday’s last load was nothing but trouble. While we were waiting for the truck to get back, the last cow in line for re-tag pushed through the gate, trotting back to the sorting pen with her head high and ears all the way forward. Fear was in her heart and violence was on her mind, but we had a chute full of cows to re-tag before the truck got back; she could wait. I was focused on the cows in front of me and didn’t notice one of the other guys walk into the sorting pen with the mad cow. I was looking for a number on the cow in the head chute when I heard a commotion and somebody ask, “You alright?” The man started to stand then sat down hard. Nope, he was definitely not alright. For the story’s sake I’ll call him Ninja Turtle. He is the same age as me, but wears his 46 years a lot heavier than I do. Turns out, he was trying to drive the mad cow back to the chute on foot – a job we usually reserve for a man on horseback. That cow charged him twice but balked when he gave ground to her. She was just gauging her distance, testing his resolve. The third time, she didn’t balk, and he didn’t have the speed to get over the fence in time. She caught his leg between her head and the fence, smashing his leg with her long forehead and tossing him about six feet in the air. He landed on top of the fence and rolled to the other side away from the cow.
We stopped what we were doing and went over to him to check for damage. The supervisor called the rover truck for a quick trip to medical for treatment. We picked Ninja Turtle up In a Fireman’s cradle, carrying him outside the corral to wait for the rover. We pulled his boots off and looked at this leg. The supervisor called back and said, “You might wanna hurry – this leg looks broke.” Ninja Turtle looked like he had a softball stuffed under his skin. His calf was so swollen, it looked like the bone was pushing the muscle up, just short of a compound fracture. The rover shower up, and we loaded Ninja Turtle into the bed of the truck. Everybody took a breath, and we went back to work; a truck was on its way that had to get loaded. Ninja Turtle had some moves, they weer just really, really slow!
After we got two more cows re-tagged, I looked and there she was – the same mad cow who just took Ninja Turtle out of the fight was at the end of the chute using that same bony forehead to push against the pipe closing it off. She just threw a man over the fence fighting against him making her move to the very place she was volunteering to get in on her own. Crazy cow got re-tagged, and we waited for the truck. She was the very last cow for the shipping list. The truck showed up, and we went to work pushing the cows into the trailer. The first group of four loaded into the mase without a fuss, but the next group of 18 took the chaos cake. We got them to the load-out and pressed into the trailer, but one cow decided she wasn’t loading. A man I’ll call Rodeo because he’s always talking about (but never actually) riding a wild cow went into the trailer to convince her otherwise. He squared off with the cow that wasn’t loading, and we found out real quick who was really running something. I looked up to see Rodeo sprinting down the ramp with a cow right on his back! Who was riding who? He hit the corner and fell in the mud as she ran right past him to the gate where I was. She had butted the gate, but it held. I slapped her ears a couple of times to keep her attention on me while Rodeo scrambled out of the load-out pen. The cow circled back around and got behind a riderless horse, pushing the horse into the cattle trailer. Now we had to go get the horse! Lucky for us, Bonnie came off without a wreck. Once she was out of the way, the cow loaded herself, and we shut that compartment. The next load of 20 cows for the belly of the trailer came down the alley hard – too hard, really. Once they hit the load out, they balked, milling around in confusion. I swung the gate closed behind them, cutting off their escape. That’s when they all pressed against the gate, trapping Bonnie and her rider, Hand Time. I call him Hand Time because he always talks about how hard time is in the other states he’s been locked up in (yet, he’s doing time in Arkansas- go figure).
Well, Bonnie and Hard Time were trapped between the gate and too many cows. The cows were pressing against Bonnie so hard, she was on her hind legs trying to climb the fence. The cows were pressing under her belly, lifting her off her feet. Hard Time climbs off her, abandoning her to the cows, and I yell, “Get the gate!” he yells back, “You get the gate!” I run over and bruise my shoulder slamming into the gate to get a tiny bit of release for a split second. I pop the batch yelling, “Move! Move! Move!”, and Bonnie runs out the gate trembling in fear. We get the gate closed and the cows loaded. Done for this day.
All in a day’s work for a cowboy, I guess, but it’s funny to see personas dissolve under pressure. Ninja Turtle was just too slow to see trouble coming. Rodeo ran from the cow he bragged about wanting to ride. Hard Time refused to save his horse for the sake of his own tail. Put the pressure of a 1,000 pound cow coming at you with violence in her eyes, and all that hard talk goes right out the window. Me? I survive as always – searching every situation for potential danger and making a plan in an instant. I’ve been on my back on the ground kicking a cow in the nose to keep her off me while my horse jumped over my head. Nothing like the sight of my mare’s belly flying over my head while a mad cow tries her best to stomp me into the ground. I roped her when I got up and choked the wind out of her just to let her know she didn’t win. Survival isn’t about the words I say or the persona I portray. Images and words fade away to be forgotten. Survival is about recognizing danger and taking action to mitigate the risks. I’ve been kicked, stomped, rammed and thrown. I survived by acting in spite of the danger, not by talking about how hard I am because I can throw a few punches. That cow doesn’t care what I say. Hard is standing in front of a charging cow, making her turn around, and keeping her turned away. Because of that mad cow senses an ounce of fear, my ninja skills have to be quick and my rodeo game as to be top-notch. If not, the hard time she’ll put me through just might send me on a quick trip to medical. Prison cowboy indeed.