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Farm & Happenings

published: April 30th 2010
by: Harvey Buehring

“Old Ranch Hand Turns Exterminator and Stubborn Heifer Motivator”
    Old man Nester was quite an all-around hand in his day.   He had worked for a number of the larger ranches in the South Texas Brush County over the years.  He knew the country well and  in his fifty- odd years of working as a cowboy, had seen and done just about all there was to see and do.  I was honored to know him.
    In his “golden years”, his ranch work had evolved into more of a caretakers position; although his title was” Headquarters Division Foreman”.   Those days his riding was limited to a lawn mowing tractor and a Gator for getting from the big house to the barn and back to his provided housing.  He no longer had any responsibility for the cattle operation or the ranch’s working horse remuda or brood mares.  Feeding the boss lady’s horses, keeping the wildlife feeders full and making sure that none of the ponds and fountains around the headquarters ever ran dry had become his primary connection with animals. That was, of course, except for weaning time when he was in charge of keeping the branding irons hot.  The bulk of his time was spent keeping the place in tip-top shape for the owners and going into town a couple times a month to secure supplies for the boss’s visits.  
    When he was hired, the boss had given him a pickup and credit card with instructions to get whatever was needed to keep the place looking nice and his wife’s horses in top shape.  Apparently, money was no object because he was instructed not to call the boss’s office unless his ranch credit card was limited-out or an emergency situation was taking place.   But after the oil bust of the early 1980's things changed.  Foreman Nester was informed that the Headquarters Division was now on a budget! That meant any expenses outside those budgeted must be approved in advance by his boss’s business  manager who had little knowledge of what was required to keep the place running like the boss and his wife wanted it run.   The budget came with a new reporting and purchase order system which made things a lot more stressful than an old cow hand wanted to deal with at his age.  On more than a few occasions, Nester’s wife had to remind him that he had to tough it out for a couple more years so he could retire with full benefits on the company pension plan.  If he could do that they would be able to have some financial security instead of just social security in their 70's and 80's.
    It was one of those dry springs that was rapidly turning into a real dry summer when Mr. Nester contacted me for some help.  The budget restraints had forced him to buy a load of bulk oats to feed the boss lady’s horses and the supply was disappearing at a much faster pace than he was feeding it to the stock.  The oats had been unloaded on  the concrete floor in a compartment in the feed room next to their equipment barn.   He had noticed that the backside of the pile of oats was disappearing nearly as fast as the front side where he had been filling his feed buckets. But there were no tracks or signs of disturbance.   First he suspected rodents, but saw no evidence that the barn cats were not doing their job.  He just couldn’t figure it out.  So I agreed to come out to the ranch and take a closer look. 
    With the aid of a flashlight, I detected a funnel like depression against the back wall behind the oats pile. That prompted me to look on the outside of the back feed room wall.  It was only a few feet away from the back wall of the equipment shed.   Closer inspection of the ground led me to find an ant trail with worker ants carrying kennels of oats from a crack in the slab of the feed room.   They were disappearing in to a hole along the wall of the equipment shed.
    Mr. Nester opened the big sliding door to the poorly lighted equipment barn and we headed to the corner where the ant trail disappeared and some old haying equipment was in storage.  Much to our surprise that corner of the building had a pile of granular soil  that would fill a large tandem dump truck bed. The mound was located along the wall and into the cutter platform of a self propelled 12 foot hay mower/ conditioner ma-chine that had been parked at that site for several  years.  
    Nester said, “Too much dirt for a badger den.  What is doing this?”
     I replied,  “Looks like a Texas leaf cutting ant queen decided to start a colony here. From the size of the mound, I’d say  they have been at work for a couple of years.    Since this species of ant prefers to harvest tender leaf tissue, they might have gone unnoticed even longer if the drought had not forced them to raid your feed room because of the lack of green vegetation in the area.”  
    “How do we get rid of them ? “ Nester asked.  
     “Fumigating the den with methyl-bromide is the most effective, so you will need to call a licensed pest control service,”  I replied.   
    Mr. Nester told me that it might take months to get permission to do that and by that time the ants  would take a real toll on the stock pile of oats.   He then inquired about other options.   I indicated that a product called Hi-life, a liquid used to treat stored gain pest, was also effective.   Since this product was highly flammable and could easy irritate tender skin it was hard to find a supplier anymore.    Nester said, “You know what, I think we had some stuff like that left over from the days when we would buy corn and milo from neighboring farmers and store it in those old galvanized grain tanks.” 
     Sure enough, in less than five minutes Nester had found an old dust covered paste-board box with six one-gallon rectangular tin cans with screw off tops.  Fortunately, four of the cans had never been opened.  It was like we had discovered gold!  
    After rounding up some rubber gloves and eye protection, I demonstrated the treatment techniques that were taught to me a decade earlier.   I emphasized the need to keep the chemical away from any ignition source and off your skin and out of eyes.  Before leaving the ranch we had used two gallons of the product treating the cut ants den and   their tunnel leading to the feed room.   I instructed Mr. Nester to re-treat if any ants were still crawling after three or four days and to treat any dens around the headquarters in order to keep them from attacking the beautiful landscape plants around the boss’s house.              Several months later I visited with Mr. Nester on one of his supply gathering trip to town.   I asked if we had put a stop to his cut ant problem.   He replied, “That stuff really works... I wish they still made products like they use to!!”