When you raise cattle, you need to herd your livestock from point A to point B many times throughout the year.
To do this, ranchers may use a combination of quads and horses. Some farms don’t have horses at all and rely entirely on quads or bikes. We were the opposite: for the first 20 years of ranching, we moved or gathered our herd exclusively on horseback.
The decision to avoid quads was multifaceted. Partly, it’s because we’re traditional and appreciate the value of stockmanship a horse provides when working cattle. We’ve always had a penful of horses for ranch work. We invested time, energy, money and feed into our horses, and in return, we relied on them solely to help us operate our ranch.
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Until last year.
For context, as a side hustle, I occasionally conduct pasture assessments for rangeland organizations. This involves a lot of observation in some of the most remote nooks and crannies of Saskatchewan’s grasslands. Hiking is a big part of the job, but sometimes getting there is tricky. Accessing sites on a pre-existing trail, or fireguard that’s impassable for most vehicles, makes a quad necessary.
After some discussion, we decided that a quad would be a useful addition for range work and might come in handy for other ranch tasks too. My Other Half made some inquiries, decided on a make and model they hoped would last, and came home from the city with “Rhonda.”
She started out shiny and red, and her name is a tribute to her brand.
Some might view adding Rhonda to our mechanical remuda as a shortcut. Others might wonder why we waited so long. After the past year of ranching, riding and quadding, like everything, there are benefits and drawbacks to being a part of the quad squad.
Horses require mindful maintenance, proper nutrition and regular hoof care. That said, Rhonda isn’t maintenance-free. She guzzles fuel, needs filters and oil changes and shows signs of wear and tear.
She has earned her keep, however. While you can’t beat fixing fence on horseback, when it comes to hauling electric fencers, large supplies or cumbersome tools out to spots a truck shouldn’t go, Rhonda comes in clutch.
Another task that Rhonda crushes is targeted weed control. She’s been a shining beacon of invasive weed management. She even helps me knock down annoying weeds around the yard. Horses have many lovely attributes, but applying herbicide isn’t one of them.
And when someone (not me!) leaves the gate open and I find cattle wandering through the yard, Rhonda is ready. A bonus is that the rev of her engine masks the mild cussing I occasionally holler as I encourage the herd to get off my lawn.
We wondered if we’d encounter a shift in mindset when it came to motors, mares and geldings. Would the quad be a little too convenient? Would our horses become idle and lazy while we defaulted to the quad?
For all of her advantages, Rhonda falls short in some categories, particularly in the most meaningful way — she doesn’t have a heart.
You can’t replace a horse. When you’re doctoring a sick animal, navigating a challenging gather or simply enjoying a ride on a late-summer day, the experience is better on horseback because you have a partner with another brain, another set of eyes and their own energy.
Horses teach lessons you can’t learn from a machine. When it comes to choosing horsepower or the power of a horse, I’ll opt for the one with the heartbeat every time.
