Loader Lightens Rancher's Work Load

There's plenty of work around the Johnstone Ranch where Montana cow-calf producer Alan Johnstone and his wife, Lillian, run a beef cattle operation. But not nearly as much as there was before he bought his Bobcat® skid-steer loader.

That was ten years ago when the Johnstones, who live near Willsall, Mont., purchased a 773 from Strong & Bradley, Livingston, Mont. Since then, it's been saving them time and labor on a wide range of chores—from building fences and laying water lines to cleaning calving pens.

"We bought the machine because of all the different work it can do," he says. Some days the machine is used only 20 or 30 minutes but saves an hour or two of hand work. Other times, such as when putting up hay, he may use it all day long. Either way, the handy loader continues to pay off. "It's a lot more efficient than doing the work by hand and saves wear and tear on my 100 hp tractor when I don't need that much power," Johnstone says.

Using a variety of Bobcat attachments, the loader is an ideal ranch hand. For example, when equipped with the auger, it makes quick work of drilling holes for fence posts. "It's twice as fast as a tractor with a 3-pt. hitch-mounted auger and it's much easier to operate," he says. "Using the pallet fork can reduce the time needed to stack hay with a tractor by about a third."

When haying, Johnstone hauls the loader on a trailer to the fields where he uses it to load the large round bales on his truck. When finished, he trailers the machine back to his hay yard where he uses it to stack the hay in two-bale-high rows. It is also used to place the round bales in corrals for his calves.

At one time Johnstone unloaded deliveries of 50-lb. sacks of salt by hand. Now he uses the loader with the pallet fork attachment to make the job easier and much faster. "I can unload the salt on a pallet in five minutes, plus I can place the pallet out of the way in the back of a shed," he says.

It's a similar story when working with fence posts. Now, instead of handling each one individually, he unloads and hauls the posts in bundles with the pallet fork.

Other time- and labor-saving attachments include a bucket for cleaning manure from heifer pens inside a barn; a trencher for installing water lines to stock tanks and electrical cables to irrigation pumps and a dozer blade for clearing snow from corrals or the quarter-mile-long driveway to the house.

In addition to its versatility, the reliability of the 773 has served him well. "We're good about doing routine maintenance," Johnstone says. "We haven't had any trouble with it. It's been a great machine."