I met Craig Gifford when I did a day for New Mexico State in Las Cruces.  His Grandfather Andy was a boyhood hero of mine, and his Father Dennis Gifford was a guy I looked up to as a cowboy growing up.  We did this interview and I thought you might enjoy reading it.  Good questions from a real good guy.

COOPERATIVE EXTENSION SERVICE • VOLUME 25 • AUGUST, 2017
From Stockmanship To Beef Industry Trends: Q & A With Curt Pate On Where We Are And Where We Are Going
Craig Gifford, Extension Beef Cattle Specialist
The NMSU ACES High and ACES High + programs are value-added programs designed to prepare calves for a healthy and productive transition to their next phase in the production cycle. The programs are off to a good start with nearly 1000 calves enrolled and approximately 750 calves designated for the certified sale scheduled for November 15th at Clovis Livestock Auction in Clovis, NM. The programs stress proper vaccination protocols and adherence to BQA guidelines; aside from vaccination, it is important to consider animal handling and stress in order to produce the healthiest animal possible
.For many operations in New Mexico, branding and weaning will be the only times cattle are handled. One of the main goals of any vaccination program is to ensure that healthy calves are being sold. However, high stress animals or animals handled in a high stress manner are more likely to experience increased rates of morbidity and mortality. NMSU recently hosted Ag Days Degree and had the opportunity to bring in Curt Pate to discuss stockmanship. Curt is a world-renowned expert in horsemanship and stockmanship and has hosted clinics throughout the U.S. and internationally. I had the opportunity to sit down with Mr. Pate and discuss a few questions.
Q: What do you feel is the area with the most room for improvement in livestock handling/husbandry on large rangeland operations?
Curt Pate: The biggest challenge I see and hear about range cattle at auction markets and feed yards is cattle don’t know how to stop. This is very important for safety and keeping the stress level down on animals as they are going into the next phase of the production system.
Q: Relative to animal handling/husbandry what do you think are the major challenges or opportunities for improvement in the beef industry in the next decade?
Curt Pate: The lack of basic skills in animal care that is learned when dealing with small numbers. We used to start out learning how to care for a horse or a few cows. Now we expect someone with very little experience to take care of hundreds of animals without the skills learned by dealing with small numbers. We need to encourage young people to get involve in 4-H and FFA to learn the basic animal care skills.
New Mexico State University—All About Discovery!TM
Q: The beef industry has been placing more of an emphasis on docility. In your opinion, is there any connection between temperament and a cow’s ability to produce in tough environments (limited forage, predators, etc.)?
Curt Pate: We need tough cows for tough environments. We need to keep the cow in the cow that fits the environment. We also need to teach them and their offspring to handle the pressure of the next phase of production (how to stop and sort) and adapt to the next phase of production. This is where stockmanship becomes important and adds value to these animals.
Q: We often hear that consumers are and will become more actively involved in the food production process by demanding more information about where their food comes from. What impacts (if any) do you think this could have on cow-calf operations in the West?
Curt Pate: It will be a positive to those that can adapt and give the consumer what they want. For those that want to tell the consumer what they need, it could create a negative impact, mostly through a lower demand for the product they raise. We need to remember people don’t have to eat beef. It’s a decision they make, and they have lots of choices.
Q: With an aging producer population, what are the major hurdles that limit opportunities for young producers to enter the beef industry?
Curt Pate: We need to change our paradigm of owning real estate and animals to be in the beef business. Land prices have changed to where you can’t buy and pay for a place with production. I see such a high quality of life for young people working in the beef industry without the financial stress that so many of the older producers have dealt with. There is such a shortage of quality people with animal husbandry skills, this looks like a way to live a good and prosperous life ahead. It’s supply and demand.

Curt Pate: I feel we have shifted so much of our time from working with and caring for animals to using computers and machines in our daily life activities and even caring for animals, that it has diminished our ability to handle and care for them. We need to make a concentrated effort to learn the things that came naturally when animals were the main part of our life.
All through time there have been changing skills that were the most valuable for the times.I feel now and in the future those skills are going to be animal handling, grazing and resource management, as well as marketing. We need to focus on these to be valuable and profitable in the future.
Concluding Remarks
It was a great pleasure to have the opportunity to discuss animal husbandry and stockmanship with Mr. Pate. The beef cattle industry is increasingly recognizing the importance of stress and how management and handling contributes to stress. However, most of the work surrounding stockmanship has centered on handling or working animals in confinement. Mr. Pate’s observation of teaching cattle to stop is an important one that both ranchers and researchers should consider. The practice of teaching cattle to stop does not occur just in a corral but also out in the pasture. It is a concept that deserves more attention. Lastly, Mr. Pate’s observation regarding the lack of basic animal husbandry experience in today’s world really highlights the importance of the great work our 4-H, FFA, other Extension personnel, and industry leaders do every day to provide animal experience to New Mexico’s youth!
New Mexico State University—All About Discovery!TM

As soon soon as I posted the last scoop loop Sammy Blossom sent me these nice photos.  He has taken lots of good pictures and sold lots of ideas over the years and it was worth the trip to Mississippi just to see Sammy.

The cattle we used in the demo were real nice and I like the way they wanted to see what was going on with the calf I layed down.  It worked out real nice on a young horse that had been started right and could take the pressure of being roped on.

Ol Mississip

I do believe the people in the “deep south” are some of most content, kindest people I have come across in my travels. They are all about hospitality and well being.

We just finished up the third regional Stockmanship and Stewardship event. It was in conjunction with the “Deep South Stocker Backgrounder Conference. Again lots of valuable info on best management practices for all types and levels of producers of beef.

They had a session on castration and dehorning that I think is a very important subject, especially for the south. We need to understand the impact these practices have on our industry. Pain is never a good thing, but I think wild animals deal with pain differently than humans do. An animal can take more extremes than a human can ( like surviving birth at -20 degrees) but that doesn’t mean it’s ok. It’s easy to get very used to these practices, and therefore comfortable with them. Any one that has ever castrated , dehorned, or branded a calf knows it creates fear from the pain. The thing we can’t see is the long lasting effects of the pain that lasts through healing process. When these animals are stiff and sore, I feel this causes them to become lethargic and decrease the desire to eat and explore their environment. We could say they get depressed to understand it in human terms.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t do it, but I am saying we ought to think about and figger out if there would be anything we can do to make it easier on the animal, and increase the odds of success for us. The age of the animal is important. The younger an animal is the less fear from pain they will show, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t impact them and the development of the immune system.

I hear lots of talk in Canada about pain management with drugs. Many are giving a pain reliever at branding time to help recovery. I’d be willing to bet we will see more of this in the future. I feel we can watch animals and see what they need in the area of exercise, rest, clean ground and comfortable surroundings. Older animals that are castrated or dehorned really get timid in a herd situation and the other animals take advantage of that. We need to manage the situation similar to what we would do for human recovery.

I also know that a big problem that many don’t see in the beef industry is pregnant heifers in the feedlot. This is a terrible thing animal welfare wise and economically.
I was visiting with someone from Mississippi and they were telling me how many cattleman in the south use the cowherd as a savings account. There is lots of grass and folks will have twenty cows or so and when the need money they sell some calves.
If you have a herd of cows you always have something to sell and get a little money.
This is great, but many, not all, are not very professional in the management of the herd. This is why there are so many cuttin bulls purchased in the area. It’s also why so many heifers get bred unknowingly. We need to really work on getting this problem fixed. This is another advantage to enjoying good stockmanship. You will spend more time with your cattle and have more pride in what you do.

So much to learn, so little time to learn it. That’s why I feel it’s important that we keep educating and being educated. Sharing knowledge is so important to the improvement of the industry. I tip the short brimmed Greeley to Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama extension for partnering with Mississippi Cattlemans and NCBA to bring this information forward in the Stockmanship and Stewardship event.

Now a little more on the airline adventures. My flight from Houston to Denver was oversold. They we horse trading on the price to take a later flight. When they said they would give an $800 dollar voucher to take a later flight I decided it was time to make the deal. So I went and had a nice meal on them and when I got back to the gate an hour later the plane I would have been on was still parked at the gate. Lightning shut the ramps down. The gate agent told me they may not get out tonight. So I made $800, got a free meal and a better flight. I’m starting to believe my new Greeley is alright, even if some folks don’t seem to care for it.

Keep riding forward!

Las Crusas, New Mexico with Dean Fish and bringing cattle up feed alley on Marcy Wards nice mare.

Starkville, Mississippi demo with Ron Gill laying them down and loading them up!