spraying the cattle

I live on a working cattle ranch, which means I am surrounded by people who have been riding horses since the age of 6 months and wear cowboy hats without irony.  It also means they have to move cattle around and do stuff to them (that is a technical description), which is fun to watch.

These are some of the cattle gathered around the corral, which is the wooden structure you see in the background.  It has a kind of maze of fences inside, so the cows can be separated and mostly immobilized.

Here are my brothers-in-law working the cattle-- they separate out the calves and chase the adult cattle into the chutes.  

Two of my brothers-in-law.  Working cattle is serious business, you can tell.

Once the cattle have been pushed into the chute, they are herded down into a narrow area so they have to file one by one.  Just after I took this picture, one of the cows went after my brother-in-law and he had to vault over the fence.  It was funny. 

Sometimes cows try to go the wrong way.  This is one of the workers encouraging them to turn around, but it looks more like Karate Kid or something, doesn't it.

The next step is to spray the cattle down (for ticks), and then they are pushed out of the chute to freedom.  I have some more pictures, but for some reason blogger is rejecting them, so I'll try and put them up later....