Cows and horses work in harmony at midstate cattle ranch

INDIAN SPRINGS -- In the northern reaches of Monroe County, amid the sweeping hills and woody bottoms below Rough Road and Castleberry Creek, the 500-acre Stoney Creek Ranch is home to 400 head of cattle.

Each winter, the fall-born calves are herded into a pen where men on horses rope their front and hind legs to hold the calves still while they are vaccinated, branded and castrated.

"I call it cowboy Christmas," said ranch owner Dr. Bill Barnes.

In a 10-gallon hat with a bandana around his neck, Barnes looks more like an hombre from out West than the orthopedic surgeon he is.

Nearly two dozen horsemen and women, some from as far away as Montana and California, visited the Barnes spread this week. And there in the countryside northwest of Lake Juliette and east of High Falls they tended his herd to prepare the 170 or so calves for market this summer.

"Horses are a passion of mine, training them, and working the cattle, stockmanship, is a passion also," said Barnes, whose medical practice lies about 25 miles south in Macon.

"The nice thing about it is that the horses with the cattle are a perfect blend. It's like they were made for each other. The cattle are happier, the way we work them with horses, and they become more and more gentle the more we're around them."

Other cattle-working methods are more common these days than cowboys on horseback.

"Anybody can get on a four-wheeler and go chase down a cow," Barnes' wife, Nancy, said.

Barnes said the herding is good for his horses.

"A lot of horses become pasture ornaments," he said, "and they just sit out there and kind of go nuts because they don't have anything to do."

Barnes, 62, had a couple of horses as a child, but he didn't take up riding and caring for them seriously until about 1996, when the Atlanta Olympics drew him to a horse park in Conyers.

In the early 2000s he bought his ranch, and to work the horses he got into the cattle business. He and Nancy have lived on the renovated top floor of one of the ranch barns for the past decade.

Barnes, who was a music major in college, considers horsemanship an art.

"It's like playing the piano, painting," he said.

"It can be done well and it can be done not so well. I look at the roping that we do with the big loops. I call it fly fishing on horseback. There's a lot going on when you're riding a horse with one hand, you've got 60 foot of rope in the other hand ... all in the meantime keeping your horse calm and you not dying. That takes some talent."

What's more, he said, it is honest work.

"It's for a purpose. You're getting these cattle ready to make the money for the ranch so the ranch can survive and employ people," Barnes said. "There are a lot of life lessons learned here."

To contact writer Joe Kovac Jr., call 744-4397.

This story was originally published January 8, 2016 at 5:07 PM with the headline "Cows and horses work in harmony at midstate cattle ranch ."