The 2025 Internship description and application have been updated and are now live! scroll down for more information!

a few FAQs:

Are you currently hiring for paid positions?

Answer: We are not currently hiring for paid positions in summer 2025, but we are offering internships.

When is your next internship and how can I apply?

Answer: our next internships will be summer 2025! Read on for a description of the positions and a link to the application. Application deadline is February 28th, 2025.

Can I just come out and visit/work for free to learn about what you do?

Answer: We aren’t currently set up to receive guests outside of our regular internship program, sorry. There are a host of liability issues and risks in the everyday work on the ranch, and we would be legally liable if one of our guests were injured while on the ranch (interns within our program are covered by insurance in case of injury).

Do you offer winter internships?

Winter is pretty slow (and boring and cold!) here at the ranch and we don’t have winter housing available. Our only current internship opportunities are in the summertime.

If you have questions: Send Melanie an email alderspringjobs[at]gmail[dot]com or send us a DM on Instagram @alderspring_ranch. Please email that “job” address, not our main “help” email address. Our “help” address is our beef customer service account and Kelsey, who responds on the help account, doesn’t manage hiring or internship queries.

Thank you for the enthusiasm about our program!

2025 Internship Description:

Please read this description of internship positions before applying!

The application deadline is February 28th, 2025 at midnight MST. No late applications will be accepted or considered.

Duration: 5 weeks. 3 weeks on the range living in cow camp, and 2 weeks back at ranch headquarters.

---

Dates: We have four 5-week sections this year that you can select from: May 20^th – June 27^th, May 27^th – July 4^th, July 8^th – August 15^th, July 15^th – August 22^nd.  

Due to the shorter length of this internship, we can’t accept late arrivals or account for time off (beyond rest days that will be scheduled into the internship). You must commit to these dates and to the full internship period.

Compensation: This is an unpaid internship. However, simple free no-frills housing, breakfast + dinner while on the range, and as much free ground beef as you can eat during the internship period will be provided!

Eligibility Requirements:

1. You must at least 18 years of age to participate in this internship.
2. You must be a US citizen. We cannot make exceptions to this requirement. There are liability, visa, and insurance issues involved for us in employing non-U.S. citizens in a ranch setting, even if you have completed paperwork to volunteer in the US.
3. You must be healthy, physically fit, able to lift at least 65 lbs, able to walk or run at least 5 miles, and able to endure long days of physical labor.
4. We require some prior horsemanship ability due to the shortened internship period and prioritize applicants who have more experience in this area. While this is a great way to improve your riding abilities and the opportunity to spend many hours in the saddle, we have young horses in the string that require a confident and able rider as they progress in their training.  At a minimum, you must come with the demonstrable ability to confidently catch, halter, saddle, and bridle a horse without assistance and then comfortably ride at a walk, trot, and lope on a loose rein. You must have independently ridden a minimum of 20 times in the past. Please do not overstate your skills in this area! Doing so may put your safety at risk. You’ll be riding independently off-trail in mountainous country almost as soon as you arrive. It’s important that you are honest about your experience level on the application!

Our Mission Statement

Alderspring Ranch is a profitable family ranch raising beef to nourish human wellness while stewarding and restoring God’s creation, building sustainability for future generations.

Internship Program Description

Please note that we’ve made significant changes to our internship program this year. Read the full description below before applying!

For hardworking and humble individuals interested in learning about cattle handling, ranching, horsemanship, wilderness living, regenerative ranching practices, and practical ranch skills on a working ranch, this is the internship for you.

Interns will be part of our team here at Alderspring for a 5-week period (you can pick the dates that work well for you). In previous years, the internship was solely a range riding internship. During your internship you’ll be spending three weeks on the range and then the other two alternating weeks on the home ranch with the opportunity to job shadow in areas that interest you.

This is not a ranch vacation. Come prepared for long days, hard work, and minimal amenities!

We are also not a “cowboy outfit.” We herd cattle on horseback and use many traditional cattle handling practices, but we’ve also incorporated nontraditional methods in much of what we do. Don’t come expecting to become an expert roper or a bronc rider. We emphasize low stress stock handling and if a horse starts bucking, we’ve gone wrong somewhere in building their foundation of training. There will not be a situation where you chase a cow down at a full gallop in a scene straight out of a cowboy movie. It’s a rare occurrence to even break a trot while herding cattle, and we don’t do a lot of roping since we rarely have sick animals.

Job description for the “range” portion of the internship:

You will spend 7 days at a time in one of our backcountry cow camps, Thursday morning to Thursday evening of the following week. You will be on our crew of riders intensively managing cattle in a specific area to prevent overgrazing or negative impact to sensitive wildlife habitats. You’ll camp near the cattle out on the range in remote cow camps that we move to a new location every week. There are no bathrooms, electricity, showers, or reliable Wi-Fi.

Days on the range can be long and physically grueling. There is no shelter from the weather: it could be raining, snowing, hailing, 100 degrees, or everything in between, but we still must ride herd on the cattle. Cell phone service is very limited. We have a GPS texting system in case of emergency, but it isn’t unusual to go several days at a time without ever hitting a patch of cell service.

We use low stress herding and stockmanship methods to herd cattle. Expect to spend a lot of time trying to slow cattle down, settle them, and get them to eat once we reach good grass. We are not pushing or driving cattle; we are managing their grazing.

You will be expected to help with work associated with range riding, including but not limited to maintaining tack and equipment (you will be responsible for the care of your provided tack and gear), helping with horse care (based on your experience level, we won’t ask you to do a task you aren’t comfortable with), moving temporary electric fence horse pens on the range, possible rangeland ecological monitoring, and moving camp or water tanks from one location to the next.

Ranch portion: During your time off between range stints, you’ll be on the home ranch for a 6-day period. You’ll have one full day off after returning from the range to rest, recover, and go to town, and you’ll have time before your next range stint to prepare. During the rest of your time on the home ranch, you are encouraged to be involved in whatever ranch jobs are occurring that day.

The day-to-day work on the ranch is varied, but some of your tasks may include:

1. Working on irrigation systems including pivots, wheel lines, pods, and/or flood irrigation.
2. Electric fence building and pasture rotation for the finishing beef cattle on the home ranch.
3. Hard fence construction (jack fence, barbed wire).
4. Various construction and repair projects.
5. Manual weed management.
6. Sorting cattle, potential occasional doctoring, and occasional weighing of cattle.
7. There may be some opportunity to help with and learn about calving if you come during the earlier internship periods. We calve mostly in May/June.
8. Assisting at our shipping warehouse to help mail beef orders out to customers.
9. Helping with weed management on the range.
10. Potential ecological monitoring on the range.

Please note that this isn’t a complete list. What we do on the home ranch is constantly changing on a day-to-day basis.

You will not be expected to be responsible for or bring past experience in any of these areas (there will be someone to supervise or work with you).

Whether you benefit from those tasks above is up to you. They can be seen as just manual labor unless you are willing to ask questions. For example, there is a lot of complexity to managing irrigation systems; ask as many questions as you can. Electric fence building isn’t just about stringing hotwire. When building a pasture, we are also calculating acreage, available dry matter, thinking about how to graze that pasture to improve soils, and managing grazing for ideal weight gains. All of that is useful information for those serious about ranching.

If you choose to turn your brain off and unroll hotwire, that’s what you’ll get out of the job. If you ask questions and get involved in the process, you’ll learn about grazing, soil health, and pasture management. If you see helping at the shipping warehouse as just taping boxes, that’s what you’ll get out of it. If you see it as an opportunity to get an inside look at how we’ve run a seven-figure direct-to-consumer shipping business since 2004, we’re happy to answer your questions!

Training:

If you read our internship description in previous years, you may have noted that we had 2 weeks of training at the beginning of the summer. Since this internship is only 5 weeks, training will be more “on the job.” Your first day here, a Wednesday, will be a training and orientation day. The next day you’ll head up to the range for your first riding and herding stint. Because you’ll be thrown into it without much preparation, we won’t expect you to know everything immediately! For the first few days you are welcome to simply “job shadow” various crew members to learn (literally just follow them around on your horse if you would like). We also all carry handheld radios, so you will be able to ask questions that way if needed. Similarly, with any ranch jobs you end up doing, we do not expect you to be an expert and are happy to answer questions.

Required: Physical fitness, proficient riding skills, a good attitude, and a teachable mindset. Personal gear including cowboy boots, rain gear, a cowboy hat, range wearable clothing and a bedroll/sleeping bag are expected.

Not required: experience with cattle, ranching, or any form of higher education, though these factors will be considered. Also not required is horse tack. If you have a saddle, you are welcome to bring it, but it will be subject to our approval prior to use (nothing personal—if a saddle doesn’t fit a horse well and is used for long hours at a time, it can permanently damage a horse’s back).

You will receive an extensive packing list if you are selected.                   

Rules & requirements during the internship:

1. No drinking, drugs, vaping or smoking on the ranch property or in cow camp.
2. Interns may not bring, carry, or use firearms. We have had multiple instances of irresponsible and unsafe firearm handling that put other crew members and our livestock at risk. As a result, regardless of your expertise or training, only our regular employees and crew members are permitted to carry firearms on the ranch. Do not bring them with you to the ranch.
3. You will be expected to maintain cleanliness in the community area shared with fellow crew members and employees, both on the range and on the ranch.
4. You must commit to the entire internship period. You’ll be given days off to rest and recover, but because the internship will be shorter and more intensive this year, we can’t accommodate additional time off (family/personal emergencies are an exception, of course). If you know you will require time off during the internship period, do not apply.
5. No guests at the ranch (it’s completely fine if friends or family drop you off for the internship or pick you up after, but you cannot invite guests to visit or stay at the ranch while you are here).
6. You must provide your own transportation to the ranch. The nearest airport is 2.5 hours away. If you elect to fly, please factor in the cost of an Uber or Lyft to the ranch.
7. You may not bring your own horse or dog to the internship. Please don’t ask us if we will make an exception for you; we won’t!

Click below for the 2025 application!

Thanks so much for applying!

FAQs:

Is this dangerous? There is always some danger where livestock, remote country, and wildlife are involved. However, we do our best to mitigate risks for our crew. In the past several years, we’ve had only a few low-risk injuries such as injured toes, bruising, cuts, and the occasional sprained ankle. We have an evacuation plan and emergency communication tools in place in case of severe injury.

How do I learn more about what the day-to-day looks like on the range? If you’re one of those people who has to have ALL the details, don’t worry! Check out our Instagram story highlights on our profile (we’re @alderspring_ranch). We have lots of stories from previous summers on the range saved there, so you can literally scroll through weeks of daily range updates. Knock yourself out!

Can I bring my dog/horse? Sorry, no!

What are you looking for in an ideal candidate? We’re looking for someone with a good attitude, a strong work ethic, and a “team player” mentality. Prior experience in agriculture will be considered, but we’ve hosted many interns in the past who had almost no experience in ranching or farming but were eager to learn.

---

---