Hello Everyone! I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself as the summer intern here at Rock Hills Ranch. My name is Garth Gatson and I live on a farm in Northeast Missouri a little over 800 miles southeast of RHR. I am currently a junior at the University of Missouri where I am majoring in Animal Science. There at the University I am also a member of the Meat Judging Team. Beef cattle are my primary interest and area of study, and I look forward to expanding my knowledge this summer.
There are many things that I hope to learn this summer here at Rock Hills Ranch, and my education is already well underway. I arrived just a little over a week ago and I have already gotten a little taste of a lot of different things here on the ranch. Some of the jobs that I will be doing here are similar to what I have done in Missouri, but everything is just a little (or in some cases a lot) different in South Dakota.
So far, in addition to learning my way around the ranch and surrounding community, I have built fence, fixed fence, torn out fence, moved cows, checked cows, built mineral feeders, and helped some SDSU grad students on their intensive grazing research project here on the ranch. Additionally, I have tried long and hard to talk some sense into cow number 413. 413 lost her calf early last week, and since then Luke, Lyle, and I have been tag teaming our efforts in an attempt to graft another calf onto her. So far, we haven’t been too successful. We are working in the best interest of both the cow and the calf, but evidently she doesn’t quite see it that way.
I am greatly enjoying my time here and anticipate many exciting adventures to come. I will pick out a few of the most interesting ones and write about them here from time to time. There is a long list of visitors and tours that are coming to RHR this summer, and I look forward to meeting many of you during my time here.
