I got to go back to Mexico and work last week. It had been four years since I had been to these feedlots with Zoetis Mexico. I was very surprised that it was almost all different workers. They went from an abundance of employees to having trouble finding enough help. Canada and the United States is taking a lot of workers.
I really like the people, the culture and the cattle. Esteban, the manajo de ganado (cattle handling) teacher with Zoetis Mexico sent some videos to me and I’ll share them with you. We went to lots of different processing, shipping, dipping and hospital facilities as well as pulled several pens, and while were waiting for some horseback guys to come pull a pen I got to help settle, find and pull some new cattle in the pen across the alley.
The food and hospitality was excellent. I can’t wait to go back.
This is a good video of the type of Cattle, pens and people in the feedlots in this region of Mexico. The town is Tamuin in the state of San Luis Potosí, north of Mexico City. It is A real high rainfall area and this operation has around 140,000 head of cattle on feed and 40,000 or so on intensively manage grazing systems. The name of the company of this feedlot is “Praderas Huastecas”. They have a slaughter facility that harvest over 1000 a day and employ over 1200 people with all operations.
In the next video, we were watching and discussing pulling pens. They have one person lead or go in front of the cattle, and then use two to three to pull the pen. A real good guy that is a manager and I jokingly call my Mexican Father as we got along real good last time I was there, asked if I would pull the pen myself.
it was a good opportunity to show that you don’t need to go to the back of the cattle and push, but get movement out the gate and just keep sending movement to that movement. These heavily eared cattle really string nice and follow the movement so all I try to do is send the movement to the movement. If they can see me and the movement it works great. I’ll post more of the videos of facility work.
Curt Pate Stockmanship 
Throughout all of the videos that you have posted, I can’t help but appreciate the calm nature of the cattle that you are working. There is very little excitement in the cattle, even in the tubs and crowding pens. I enjoyed seeing that. Good work!
Pretty cool, I have a 8month Aussie pup that has an instinct to pull a pen just like that. What a great experience to help such a huge operation. Those cattle look pretty docile.