Is it really "Just what cows do?"

  "Thats just what cows do."

I first heard those words uttered when I was ten years old, after asking why cattle scatter out to graze, rather than grazing as a group like the sheep and goats did. Fifty three years later I am still hearing those same words repeated ad infinitum.  This phrase is used to describe everything from grazing patterns, to the way cattle handle (or don't handle,) or why cattle don't pair up, to why cattle crawl through fences and why they are so wild.

   This phrase is ignores the fact that these behaviors only apply to the situation the cattle are in, rather than cattle in general. Cattle behavior is directly linked to their environment. Our behavior in handling them is one of the biggest environmental factors to cattle behavior, yet it is also the last one we look at. Also, much of our beliefs on cattle behavior is dependent upon how, when, and the number of groups of cattle we observe.

How...All to often we limit our of observation of cattle to the cursory once over without really thinking about how the cattle are behaving...after all, they are behaving "normally," so why look any deeper? As long as cattle are not walking the pasture, or distributing behavior we deem to be irregular, we don't give it a second thought. If we are not observing and asking ourselves what the motivation is behind what they are doing, we aren't learning why they are doing it.


When...The time of day is going to have something to do with how the cattle are behaving. One observation we seldom make, is how do cattle behave when they are going to water, or back out to graze. Most of us are used to our cows calling to their calves when we start a move, and look at that as a thing that "good cows just do." If we would take the time to observe cattle as they are leaving water on their own, we would see that these same cows seldom call for their calves.

Now, if we change how we are observing the cattle, and combine our two observations, we might ask ourselves why their behavior is different. Hopefully, we will also recognize that the difference in behavior is stress related, and ask ourselves if there is anything we can do differently to alleviate this behavior.

Numbers of groups...I am talking people as well as cattle. If we work with the same cattle constantly, and the same people, or people who work in the same way, it clouds our knowledge. We think of the behavior of cattle as simply "thats what cattle do" and forget that cattle are only reacting directly to what we are doing. When we change our behavior, they will change theirs.

Be sure and visit my website for more information on regenerative grazing, cattle behavior, and stockmanship schools.

Using Cattle Instinct To Turn Them

One of the things we often forget when handling cattle is that we can use their instincts to our benefit. One of these instincts is for cattle to go around us. When sorting cattle out of a pen, or getting them to go to other cattle in the pasture most of us tend to go to the front of the cow to force them to turn. As this short video shows, this is not necessary.  Using their instinct to go around us lets them turn and go without the stress of us getting in their face.

Low Stress Roping

When most people think of roping, they think of it as it is done in the arena. Run hard, throw a loop and jerk the animal around so another person can rope the heels and stretch an animal out as fast as they can. Cowboys often feel that this is the only, or at least the fastest way to get cattle doctored in the pasture. Just like low stress stockmanship, the original Vaquero style of roping appears to be slow, but is actually faster and more efficient in the long run.

A good example was one ranch I was on where we were having a scours/ pneumonia wreck.  Between two of us, we were doctoring up to 160 calves a day, or 80 to 90 calves apiece everyday. By using the old style big loop style that people consider to be "fancy," I was able to accomplish it without having to change horses at noon everyday. My cattle stayed calm and easy to handle. At the same time the other guy (who constantly cussed me for "packing a clothesline") not only had to change horses everyday at noon, but the cattle he was doctoring on would take off at a trot as soon as he rode into view.

There are several secrets to why big loop roping are low stress.

1. Variety of available loops. Rather than being limited to either a conventional run them down head or heel loop, a person will have four or five varieties of head and heel loops to fit different scenarios.
2. This variety of loops, combined with low stress handling methods allows a person to do the vast majority of their roping at a walk or trot. 
3. Allows ropers to handle cattle without constantly choking them because of the style of hondos used.

As you can see in the picture to the right, this style of hondo will give an animal a chance to breath when the rope is slackened.  While allowing an animal to have slack on the end of the rope may sound strange, in actuality is allows the animal to remain calm. This helps in two ways. If a person is doctoring cattle too large to wrestle to the ground, it allows you to trot a couple of circles around the animal (having them step over the rope with their front feet), basically heeling them so you can pull them over with minimal effort. If two people are doctoring, this allows the heeler to throw their loop and get the animal down for treatment with minimal stress on the cow and minimal effort on their horse. Combined, this method allows you to doctor more cattle on fewer horses while keeping your cattle from getting wild. 

Many people are reluctant to try the big loop style of roping because they are afraid of getting tangled up in the "extra" rope. The best way to learn is to practice on a roping dummy, then rope cattle using a breakaway hondo. If you do something wrong, instead of being tied to a cow, the hondo will release the rope. Once you get to the point of being able to stop your cattle with the breakaway hondo like in the video below, you are ready to start roping for real. Between the variety of loops and distance they can be thrown, you will be able to doctor more cattle in a day, with less effort than you ever thought possible.

  

Cowman Dressage

While "Cowboy Dressage" has turned into an arena event with no cattle, there is a reason behind doing dressage movements when working cattle. Holistic educator and low stress cattle handling clinician Guy Glosson has a saying, "You never get a second chance at a first approach."

While it is easy to make a mistake when approaching a cow to sort it off from the others, the real problem is not in the mistake, but in how we recover from it. In order to make a quick recovery, in a way that keeps the cattle calm. Having a horse that knows a little "Cowman Dressage" can go a long way in adjusting those first approach mistakes.

Handling cattle and riding a horse are two things which consist of a large amount of "intuitive feel." In order to be really good at either one, the more feel you have the better you will be. This feel is something most of us have to work at. We don't realize just how sensitive the the feel between us and the horses we ride can be. For those of us who are working cattle horseback, we often feel we don't have the time to work on it, but the fact is we pass up opportunities to work on our feel and focus nearly every time we get on a horse.

Day one of my clinics focus on developing feel and how to take advantage of our natural surroundings to build dressage movements in our horses. While we are doing this, we are also discussing cattle behavior and when to use different movements. Day two is applying these movements on cattle. These clinics are held in the pasture and limited to eight riders.
For more information on clinic dates, or to host a clinic, visit my main website.

Interview on Low Stress Cattle Handling With Bob Kinford

Agricultural Insights interview 059 with Bob Kinford on low stress cattle handling. To attend or host a clinic by me, visit my website for more information.

Observe, Ask and Analyze

Much of what we assume we know is a result of how much we think (or don't think) about what we experience. All of what we do with livestock is based on what our past experiences have been. Until we change how we observe and think about why animals react to us the way we do, we cannot make any meaningful changes in how we do things.

Some reactions to my last post, http://cowherdmanagement.blogspot.com/2013/01/if-bison-chased-horses-cattle-chased.html are perfect examples. Several of them were up in arms. They threw out examples of individual bison leaving a herd to chase horses and even one which apparently broke into a pen to gore some horses. It would not be reasonable to assume the entire human race violent based on Charles Manson, Hitler and Stalin, so why do we do it with the animals we handle?

It doesn't matter if we are working with bison, elk, horse or (insert breed) of cattle, other than a few individuals, their overall temperament and behavior relies heavily upon how frequently and what methods are used in handling them. The problem lies in the fact that when an animal does something we don't like (such as charging a horse) people tend to look at the behavior as an independent action rather than as a reaction to what we have done. In our eyes we may have not done anything to warrant that (re) action. However we need to take into account how the animal(s) have been handled in the past that has instilled these behaviors into them. I've run across people who own ranches (as opposed to ranchers) who refuse to work cattle with horses because “horses make cattle wild” or that horses are “too unpredictable and hard to handle.” The simple fact is, as stockmen and horsemen, we need to not simply acknowledge that an animal or group of animals is unruly or mean. We need to observe when they are reacting in negative ways and be introspective as to our actions immediately prior to the negative behavior. In order to modify the behavior of our livestock, we must first observe and recognize their behavior to the point we recognize the negative behavior before it actually happens.

This philosophy of observing and analyzing goes far beyond just improving the behavior of our livestock. All too often the deterioration of our pastures is not noticed until it is a borderline disaster. We need to continually observe, and think about our observations.

The pasture I am in now appears to have healthy grass from a distance. However there are large areas that upon close observation have large amounts grass at the base which are gray and matted. This makes me ask myself which would be more beneficial; taking only a third of the grass as planned, or taking more grass while breaking up more of the dead plants?

Another observation I have made concerns water availability and predators. There is a theory that having more water points makes it harder on predators than having just a few “ambush” points. What I have observed is that there are more coyotes in the pastures which have a higher number of water points. Now that the observation has been made, we need to ask a question and analyze it. The question is “does fewer water points help predators by reducing ambush points, or does having more water points simply support more packs of coyotes?”

For our ranching operations to be as successful as possible, we need to observe, ask and analyze instead of simply reacting without analyzing.

For more on my services visit Migratorygrazing.com. If you like humor, be sure to check out my humor and cookbooks at 2lazy4U Livestock & Literary Co.

Cowboys Agreeing With Animal Rights Groups?

     A recent conversation began with a person complaining that the feedlot he was working in was putting fresh calves on a straight ration without feeding any hay. The participants of this discussion were all men who take pride in handling cattle with the least amount of stress, and keeping their death losses as low as possible. By the end of the discussion, we all agreed that perhaps we were more in agreement with animal welfare groups and food activists than we are with the cattle feeding industry.

   The basis of this conclusion stems from what we have been told by nutritionists and feedlot veterinarians that the bottom line shows it is more profitable to push cattle too hard on feed than taking two weeks to start them without the acidosis caused stress and resulting death loss. Aside from the fact that this line of thinking aligns directly with views of PETA, HSUS and natural food activists, it is also dead wrong on the profit/loss margins.

   Every animal being treated is a cut into profits, as is every animal that dies. Bud Williams has proven numerous times that it is possible to cut both morbidity and mortality rates in feedlots by 50% just by changing the way cattle are handled.  Despite this, the feedlot industry seems to think they can increase profit by mass treating every pen of calves then pushing them on feed so hard that they are guaranteeing they will lose more cattle and spend more money on drugs (not to mention the overtime for pen riders and hospital crew.)

   One study by Dr. Pete Anderson  shows that pens of 700 lb steers with no death loss gained 13% faster and had 9% lower feed conversion values than pens with 2% or more death loss.  There is a direct correlation between morbidity in feedlots with not only cattle handling procedures, but in the acidosis related stress by pushing cattle onto feed rations too fast. 

   By taking the time to start calves a little slower, and emphasizing low stress cattle handling techniques feedlots would be eliminating half (or more) of their antibiotic costs, over half of their death losses while increasing feed efficiency. This all adds up to higher profits for the feedlots. At the same time, it takes the wind out of the arguments of animal welfare groups and those who want a safer food supply with fewer antibiotics and hormones. 

Week Two of Holistic Herding on 32,000 Acres

One thing I want to emphasize before going any farther, is that instilling the herd instinct happens much faster when when using the same class of cattle in a herd, and all of the cattle arrive at the same time. This project is being done with the cattle coming in over a period of three to four weeks, and consisting of everything from open yearling heifers, to older dry cows, to week old pairs and calving cows.

Instilling the herd instinct in a mixed group of cattle like this is harder (but not impossible) as the younger open cows move out readily while the springers will move slower, and cows with young calves have to pick up their babies and can only move as fast as their calves. Never the less, The cattle are basically grazing the areas of the pasture they are being placed into.

As mentioned in last week's post, the weather threw a kink into the program when a cold front moved in ahead of a storm and the cattle drifted into the brush. Tracks showed that the cattle were staying together until one part of the herd hit a fork in the trail and split them into two bunches. Somewhere in the middle of the brush, part of the one group stopped while the other kept going into the next pasture, as the fence has been down in that area for years. As Monday was my day for changing pastures anyway, I gathered the draws and placed those cattle in the southwest corner of the new pasture. The following video shows how easy it is to gather in the brush and put the cattle through a gate and still have the cattle paired.

Because of the way things wound up the first week, and the move, the cattle are now in three groups, watering in three different places. Despite this, the cattle are still grazing in the same general area of the pasture, it just requires me to pick up each group off of their water point and place them. When they go to water, each group is going back to the water point they are familiar with. Despite the current stage in the training process, we are still getting the desired animal impact from concentrating the cattle as in the picture below.

When I make the move into the next pasture, the cattle will be placed into two groups on two different water points. The open cattle, cows in their first or second trimester, along with older pairs will be place on one water point, while the young pairs and cows ready to calve will be placed on a second water point. Because of their different rates of travel, this will be easy to accomplish as the first group will travel faster. I will have a person helping me on this move and one of us will simply bend the second group to one water point and hold them while the other continues with the other group to the desired water point. This will allow me to graze two different parts of the pasture simultaneously while working each with each group to get them to acting as a herd. The cattle will be in this pasture for 14 days before being mixed together as one herd. The move after the next pasture will be long, and up a steep grade. At this point the cattle will probably once again be ran as two herds in the same pasture. This would not be necessary if all of the cattle were open, or at approximately the same stage of pregnancy (or had the same age calves).

The optimum situation would have been to have all of the cows dry (or yearlings) and to have received them all at the same time. This would have shortened the training period from 4 to 5 (or 6) weeks to only a couple of weeks. However using different classes of cattle, receiving them over a period of 3 to 4 weeks, and training them in pastures with brush is allowing me to demonstrate that there are not many situations you cannot instill the herd instinct into cattle.

Low Stress Cattle Handling, Hype or Fact?

Like most of us, I am confused by the way the beef industry is trying to get the cattle industry to use low stress cattle handling methods. If my own first hand experience had not already taught me better, I would think that low stress stockmanship is just a worthless bottle of snake oil. We must remember that this isn't about forcing cattle to go where we want, but acting in a manner which makes cattle think it is their idea.

Twenty years ago, when I first saw an ad for a cattle handling seminar I laughed. At the time I was working under a manager who was a big fan of Bud Williams, and shortly after the ad came out, this man and the cowboss went to Bud's seminar. To me, this pair was pretty confused to begin with, but when they came back, they seemed to be worse off than before attending the seminar. It was fairly obvious that this so called low stress cattle handling was just a bunch of snake oil...Or was it? The following spring I was informed that I was going to be attending a seminar with one of the other hands. Was I irritated at having to go waste time attending? Yes. Was it a waste of time? Most definitely not!

To me, nearly all of what Bud Williams was teaching was very obvious, as I was already doing it. However to most of the people attending, it was hard to understand. Perhaps the most confusing thing for people to understand was putting cattle through a gate by working the gate on a “T” with the person in front putting the cattle through the gate and the people in the back doing no more than necessary to keep the cattle in the back, facing to the front. This concept is simple, and Bud shows video of doing this in several different situations, yet people kept asking questions of how to do it for over half an hour. By this point the realization set in that Bud knows what he is doing, but people have a hard time grasping the principles because they go against human nature. I was struck by the realization that there is such a thing as low stress cattle handling, but many, if not most people have a difficult time understanding it because so much of it goes against human nature.

Today, low stress cattle handling is sort of a buzzword at least with the main stream agriculture publications, and the NCBA. Unfortunately nearly every article is nearly a copy of the others. They have little real information, and virtually nothing new. Watching some of the videos produced will convince a person that low stress cattle handling is all hype and will not work in real life situations.

This is especially true when people giving demonstrations talk about “training a cow to drive.” You do not train a cow to drive. Where the cow goes is totally dependent upon what you are doing and how you are doing it. 99% of the time a cow runs across the pen it is because you lost position or put too much pressure on the cow. What is seldom (if ever) mentioned is when you see that cow thinking about making that move, moving away from the cow rather then putting pressure on it will straighten the cow's direction.

When watching demonstrations on low stress cattle handling, the movements are so subtle that spectators may miss the slight drop of a shoulder or turn of the body that takes the pressure ff a cow and changes her mind. More often than not, the person demonstrating does not mention that to the audience, so that the finer points of what one needs to do, and when are lost to the observers. The same thing holds true for handling cattle horseback. At times, simply changing the angle of your horse to the cow will calm the cow down and get the results you want without speeding up. Unfortunately, most of us have been taught to keep our horses parallel to the cow at all times.

This may work well in arena events where you are judged (and given “courage points”) for chousing cattle around the arena, but it is the last thing one wants to do when trying to keep your cattle calm and things flowing. There are times when simply moving one end of your horse, one step, will calm the animal you are working and allow it to turn without losing momentum. In the branding pen, that one step may give you a clear shot to rope a calf without it bounding through the rest of the calves and stirring them up. 

     

For more information, visit http://www.naturalcattlehandling.com

Getting Feedlot Cowboys On The Low Stress Bandwagon

There is no doubt that the industry leaders are interested in having low stress cattle handling method being the industry norm rather than the exception. I am no sycophantic elocutionist, all I can do is call things like I see them. Unless there is a direct benefit to the average pen rider , cowboy or ranch hand, they are not going to see the benefit in changing how they work cattle. In order to get the rank and file pen riders and ranch hands wanting to excel in low stress cattle handling we need to do two things. First we need to show that low stress cattle handling is more efficient. Second we need to give them a reason to learn and practice it.

The best way to do this is through a series of competitions in realistic low stress cattle handling to be sponsored by BQA, with a sizable reward (as in cash and prizes) for the winners. This contest would entail riding pens just as if they were riding pens at work, only would be pulling cattle marked with paint balls. A model for the competition wold be;

1. Twenty pens to be ridden by each contestant with fifty marked animals to be pulled.
2. Each contestant starts with two hundred points.
3. A point would be subtracted for each animal that breaks out of a walk.
4. Two points would be subtracted for causing animals other than the one being pulled to move faster than a walk.
5. Each contestant would have one marked animal wearing a heart monitor. The contestant raising the hear rate of this animal the least would have ten points added to their score and the second lowest raise of heart rate would receive five points added to their score.
6. If a rider does not pull all of his marked cattle, they will have two points deducted from their score.
7. Rider will also have two points deducted for every unmarked animal pulled.
8. In case of a tie score, the fastest time wins.

While this would not be a spectator sport, it would give pen riders a reason to get interested in low stress cattle handling. If you were to check the death loss and medical costs in any feedlot, you will find that those numbers correlate directly to how cattle are being handled. The less stress being put on cattle, the lower the death loss and antibiotic costs will be. The more stress put on the cattle the higher those numbers will be. The last feedlot I worked at, I asked the hospital crew to run the numbers on all of the pen riders for a year so I could compare them. Between the person who cause the less stress, and the person who caused the least amount of stress, the cost difference was over $250,000. With that kind of losses going on, it seems as if a little prize money as incentive would be a cheap way to get more cowboys on the low stress band wagon.

To learn about my own intensive program for teaching low stress cattle handling in feedlots, visit my website.

Heat Detection Made Easy

Most of us are still calving, but breeding season is just around the corner. If you are running an artificial breeding program, or thinking of starting one, you need to know the best, and easiest way to pen your breeders. Many operations not only make more work out of heat detection than necessary, but also work against themselves and the cattle in doing so. This is evident with all of the stories about how wild cattle are to pen when it is time to breed.

The fact is, that when handled properly, at the proper time, the cattle will almost pen themselves. To understand this, we must first understand the mental and physiological state of cattle when they cycle.

Two to three days before a cow is actually in heat, they become agitated and are starting to think about breeding. They will be in the groups of hot cows, butting heads and riding the cows which are actually hot, as well as others which are close to being in heat. The cows which are actually hot only have breeding on their mind. For the eight to twelve hours they are actually in heat they seldom graze or drink, and ignore their calf in search of a bull. This is the time you need to be penning them, when they are hot and wanting to breed. If you drive or ride through the cattle and mark down the numbers of the cows in heat, then pen them when it is time to breed, you are working against yourself. At this point the cow is tired and interested in relieving that tight bag, eating, drinking, and resting. This makes them harder to find, and because they are tired, it also makes them harder to handle. Penning cattle when they are hot and looking for a bull, or other cattle in heat makes them both easy to find, and pen. The first thing you need to do is to place your breeding pen(s) in an area which is either visible to your cattle, or in an area they will naturally flow to. The pens need to have three sections. One to hold your cattle being bred. A second area to hold hot cows waiting to be bred, and a pen to bring hot cattle into that is large enough to sort off the ones not quite in standing heat.
When you start that group of hot cattle across the pasture they will have a tendency to run off, and of course we have the tendency to try and keep them from doing that. As long as they are moving in the general direction of the pen, don't try to hold them up. They will travel for awhile, then stop and start riding each other again. For this reason you don't want to even try keeping up with them. If you try to slow them down, they will interpret this as being chased and they won't stop. Keep pushing them and it won't be long before they will become irritated and split up. Let them keep riding a couple of minutes after you do catch up. Position yourself so that when you start them, they are headed in the general direction of the pen again. Most of the time they will take off and run to the next group of cattle and start sniffing around. There are many times that this is the stimulus a “silent heat” needs to become visible. Once you are sure there are no more hot cows in that group, start them towards the breeding pens.
When these cattle see the pens, with cattle in them they will make a beeline for the pens. Because of their one track mind at a this point, they will want to get into the pens to see if they can get what they are looking for. As long as you are patient, they will work their way around the pen and actually find their way in the gate. The whole key to making this work is having the patience to let the cattle move at their own pace and letting them go where you want rather than trying to force them. Basically, unless you do something to make them mad and quit thinking about being bred, they will want to go to the breeding pen. One other mistake that people make while penning cattle using this method is trying to get the calf to go with the cow. The cow is not the least bit interested in her calf at this point. Even if left in the pasture, she will not let the calf nurse as she is interested only in breeding and will not think about her tight bag or the calf until she is out of standing heat. As soon as she is let out of the breeding pen she will meet up with the calf at the last spot the calf nursed, or the calf will follow on its own and meet it's mother when she is let out of the breeding box. The only time you need to take the calf with you is if you are in a three cycle breeding season (which will probably happen only on a registered operation.) By the third cycle you won't be finding hot groups, but individual hot cows. At this point your hot cow will stand out because of the number of bull calves mobbing the cow. In this situation the hot cow just wants to get away from the calves. With no company in the pen she will be likely to jump out if her calf shows up. For that reason, you will want to pen her calf with her. Penning while the cattle are actually hot also works better while breeding in a feedlot situation as well. The hot cattle will come off feed earlier than the rest of the cattle and start bulling. At this point it is not only easier to spot them, you will be only working the hot group and the rest of the cattle will be out of your way. It is fairly simple to sort the heifers in standing heat from the bullers at the gate. As you work your way down the alley these hot heifers will actually act as bait to draw the hots in your other pens to the gate. If you follow this procedure and allow the cattle to work themselves you will not only pen cattle easier, you will have higher conception rates from the lack of stress on the cattle. You will also have less stress on yourself and your crew.

The myth of “breed type disposition”

Herefords are thought of as being gentle, while Brahma, Limousine, and Saler, cattle are thought of by most cattlemen in this country as being harder to handle because of their disposition. The fact that they can be harder to handle has more to do with the frequency and methods used handling them than their actual disposition. Now that half of you are ready to tar and feather me, then run me off the cyber range, I have a couple of simple questions for you to ponder.

Why is it that the above mentioned breeds which many of us consider to have bad attitudes, considered to be gentle breeds in their country of origin? If Hereford cattle are so inherently gentle, then why are there areas with a lot of high headed Herefords that streak off across the pasture with a knot in their tail at the sight of a person on horseback?

I started wondering about those two questions over forty years ago. Twenty years ago I had the unique opportunity to halter break the show calves for a big registered outfit. Part of their show string was several Red Angus embryo transplant calves which were full brother/sister. One would think that the genetically inherent gentle nature of their breeding. Three of the calves were out of recip cows which were raised on the ranch. These mothers had been handled half right all of their lives and were fairly gentle. These three broke to lead fast and enjoyed the brushing and grooming. The recip cow for calf number four was a Hereford purchased from a neighboring ranch which culled her because she was too wild. Despite having identical genetics, she was harder to halter break, kept kicking when a person groomed her and ran away with the herdsman several times at the show. Long story short, she had been trained by her mother to be wild and obnoxious.

On the other end of the spectrum, several years ago I was sent a bunch of smooth mouth Santa Gertrudis cows for the winter. We were to calve them out and ship the mothers to the packers at weaning time. These cows came off a ranch where they gather mainly with helicopters. When they do use cowboys the man to cow ratio is usually around 1 to 20. When they came off the truck, half of them were hunting and ready to run over a man on foot, and would challenge a man on horseback. After working on settling them down a couple of hours we turned them out in a small trap.

When I started to gather the trap a few days later, all the cattle ran to the back corner and wadded up. Thinking it would be better to go out a gate and move them off the fence from the outside, I headed away from the cattle and towards a gate. Before making it to the gate,there was the screeching sound of breaking wire and the cattle were out and running out and running.

After only seven months of being handled with low stress methods, three of us penned over 500 of these cows, sorted the calves off the cows and shipped them. The cattle manager of the ranch owing the cows was amazed as he had never seen the cattle penned that easily or worked that quietly.

The moral of these examples is that how cattle are handled (and the frequency they are handled) affects the disposition and behavior of cattle as much as genetics.After working with tens of thousands of cattle, and watching people work them, it is easy to understand how there can be so much confusion on low stress cattle handling and understanding of cattle behavior. Our knowledge is only the sum of our actual experience combined with what we have learned through educational experiences. Until we observe cattle acting as a herd and without stress, our observations of cattle behavior will not be accurate as our base opinions are based upon faulty information.

For more information and clinics, visit http://www.naturalcattlehandling.com

Doing Away With "Predator/Prey" Thinking

When we hear about new methods, especially when they claim to result in things which run counter intuitive to what we have experienced, we are suspicious. I have to admit that the first time I heard of a low stress cattle handling seminar I thought it was one of the dumbest things I ever heard of. Like most people I felt I'm doing as good a job as can be done and didn't need the “education.” Looking back, I feel that while my reaction was normal, I really wasn't looking at the larger picture. That changed when I was forced to attend a Bud Williams seminar.

What I learned in Bud's seminar was not what one would expect. I was already doing the things he was teaching, and in fact doing some things he was not teaching. I was astounded at how, no matter how he he explained things, people would have a difficult time understanding the most simple concepts. The final day of the seminar, rather than go to lunch with everyone else, I stayed back to talk with Bud. We discussed some of the things I was doing which worked for me, and why people seem to have such a hard time understanding how cattle work. That was in 1992.

Since then I have been reading every article I can just to see how others are trying to teach people how to handle cattle, and writing a few articles myself. Bud liked my views enough he put a link to my main website at the top of his links page. After spending the last twenty years studying how people are trying to teach reduced stress cattle handing I have come to two conclusions.

First, you cannot learn to work cattle by sitting in a classroom or watching someone else demonstrate. Cattle are living, reacting creatures. In order to learn how to work with them you need to learn how to read them. You can only do this with closely supervised work sessions, which work best if you can look at video to see where you made your mistakes, and where you did things correctly.

Secondly, we must quit looking at everything as a prey/predator relationship. I recently read an article by Temple Grandin describing what she called “passive stalking” and how that can force cattle to come together as a herd. While it is true, when predators travel up the outside of a herd, that the herd moves forward, it is totally false that this is a predator specific relationship. In fact this reaction happens among individuals within a herd. This reaction is also common in humans as well as grazing animals, and has more to do with dominance and body language than the predator/prey relationship.

Most of us observe cattle by merely looking for what health problems there may be. Since I was a small child I have always enjoyed just watching cattle for the sake of watching them. What I discovered as a small boy was that when one of the more dominant animals are walking through the herd (whether it is in a pen, or a pasture) will occasionally drop it's head a bit and change it's posture to a slightly aggressive mode while walking past some of the other animals. The reaction of the other animal would be to start up and walk past the more dominant animal. This reaction is not restricted to grazing animals. Humans have this same reaction as well, and it is easy to put to the test.

Next time you are in a crowded environment such as a mall or WalMart, you can try it for yourself. When you see someone coming in your direction, slightly increase your walking speed, twist your shoulders towards the person while shifting your eyes towards them (without actually turning your head). As you approach your “target” person they will actually speed up to get past you.

This concept is probably hard for most people to fathom because it runs counter nearly everything we have been taught in how to work cattle. The fact is that most of what we have been taught is exactly the opposite of what our cattle need to be relaxed and at maximum production. The proof is revealed in one simple question; If cattle are a herd animal, then why do they spread out across the pasture?

By changing our handling methods to ones which cause less stress in our cattle, we are not training them to act as a herd, but removing the stress and allowing them to enjoy herd behavior as nature intended. For more information, visit my natural cattle handling website.

Low Stress Cattle Handling/Horsemanship Clinics

You cannot substitute articles and videos on reduced stress cattle handling procedures for real time, hands on experience to become proficient at handling cattle. Few of these articles and videos address the differences involved between handling cattle on foot or on a horse. Fewer still describe how, by simply changing the angle of your horse's body in respect to the cow, you can control the cow's speed and direction.

For a person handling cattle horseback on a ranch, or riding pens in a feedlot, you cannot learn how to handle cattle in a reduced stress manner without including horsemanship. Low stress cattle handling is synonymous with good horsemanship, you can't have one without the other. While those teaching low stress cattle handling on foot concentrate on reading cattle and making small corrections to keep things going, many of those teaching it from horseback are still doing many of the same old things. Keeping a horse parallel to a cow, beating it to the fence and working, prey/predator relationship, and training cattle to drive.

The word natural is over used and often misconstrued. The way your cattle act right now is only their natural reaction to what you are doing. The key to low stress cattle handling is to do things in a manner which naturally gets cattle to doing what we want in a calm manner.

If we are driving a cow and keeping our horse parallel to the cow and decide we need to turn it, we start putting pressure on their eye to get them to turn away from us. When we do this we turn our horse towards the cow and they speed up and try go around us. We blame the cow for speeding up and trying to go around us, but we are the one who turned on that switch in the cow to get that reaction.

In the same situation if we are tracking the cow with a slight amount of lateral movement on our horse we can actually ask the cow to turn by taking pressure off the cow. We do this by asking our horse to speed up slightly while moving laterally away from the cow. When we do this, we are taking away both the instinct of the cow to speed up and to go around us. Instead the cow feels as if its opportunity to go around us is taken away. At this point, rather than being excited and wanting to get around us, the cow's reaction is to turn slowly (without stress) away from us and in the direction we want.

In order to take advantage of the above natural instinct of cattle, we need to develop our horsemanship to a higher level. At times we can slow a cow by simply changing the angle of our horse in relationship to a cow. Essentially, the better our horsemanship is, the more we can master low stress cattle handling. This isn't to say our horses have to be perfect, as there is no true perfection. However if we master our horsemanship enough we can take advantage of methods to handle cattle with lower amounts of stress, not only on the cattle, but on our horses and ultimately on ourselves. The easier you make things on the cow, the easier it is on your horse, and the easier it is on you.

The answer to the conundrum of how to learn both the horsemanship techniques and the lower stress reactions of cattle is to learn them both at the same time. After years of thought on the matter I have designed a clinic program which addresses both the horsemanship and low stress instincts of cattle. As learning all of this is intensive, hands on clinic sizes will be limited to a total of seven participants, including crew or owners of sponsoring ranches. To learn more of my methods and all these clinics cover visit my main website.

I am now accepting host ranches for 2012 clinics. If you are going to be running yearlings, coinciding a clinic when you receive cattle, they will be calm and easy to handle when you turn them out with no additional labor costs. If you are running an AI breeding program I can also include training on how and when to pen your cattle for minimum stress and optimum conception. If you would like to host a clinic, email me me and we will make arrangements.