Behavior—and its implications in everyday handling of animals—also relates to moving cattle. It is important to examine the behavior of the animals and how they respond to us.

First and foremost, it is important to understand how cattle perceive us. Cattle are prey animals and therefore have higher fight or flight reactions. Also, because they are prey animals and have eyes set to the side of their head instead of forward facing, their perception of the world is a lot different than ours. It is also why we can encounter problems when it comes to handling cattle.

There has been a lot of talk about cloning lately.

This technology has tremendous potential in the world of science; however, there are questions that have been raised about its use in agriculture. That’s not to say that this technology cannot benefit agriculture, but the reasons it is being marketed to bucking bull producers has not been fully explained. I’ve heard the speeches by the cloning companies and I have to admit, they give pretty convincing reasons to clone your animals. I’ve heard skeptics say that, after they heard the pitch, even they thought about loading up a bunch of animals to have them cloned. So this isn’t a matter of misunderstanding or misinterpreting the technology. On the contrary, you realize that there’s a great potential for its use. Unfortunately, if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Do you realize that Bull Pen is read by tens of thousands of readers?

Do you know that most of those readers are not directly involved with breeding or producing bucking bulls?

For those of you who are producers, how can you involve some of the traditional cattlemen reading this publication into the business? Let’s take an innovative look into the current breeding operations and how we might benefit from branching out a bit.

Cooperator herds, also called satellite herds, are becoming increasingly popular in the beef and dairy cattle industries. The rationale behind this is to increase your ability to produce animals by using animals in another herd. There are different forms of satellite herds depending on the needs of the producers. You can trade bulls, you can trade females — there’s really no finite set of rules for cooperator herds.

“Even with the great improvements made to all methods of shipping, transport is still considered one of the most stressful events that cattle will undergo during their lives.” This is a direct quote from a review on cattle transport conducted by J.C. Swanson and J. Morrow-Tesch taken from the Journal of Animal Science 2001. Shipping stress is of major importance in both the beef industry and the dairy industry. It has yet to be determined, through scientific study, the effects of shipping on bucking stock. However, the research conducted in other cattle industries is worth mentioning and has implications for our sport. T.G. Knowles made an observation that “concern for the welfare of cattle during and after transport generally increases with their economic value.” Given the value of rodeo stock today, it is safe to say that dealing with transportation stress is of the utmost importance.
Transportation stress has been implicated in morbidity and mortality rates in addition to affecting physiological, immune and behavioral responses. Transportation stress also affects reproduction and feed and water intake. Unfortunately, due to the many variables affecting individual animals it has been difficult to gather any concrete information regarding shipping stress and direct remedies for it. Some of the factors influencing the amount of stress cattle undergo include, but are not limited to, age, gender, breed, pre-transport handling, nutritional status, weather, novelty, food and water deprivation, driver experience and stocking densities.