Keeping the mother in a cow

An animal can only have its mind in one main place at a time. 

A cow being an animal that finds safety and comfort in the herd learns to always have their mind on the herd and its mental state of being. 

Fear and anxiety in the herd puts a single animal on the same mindset, and creates the feeling of going with the herd for safety and comfort.  This is great and good almost all of the time, except when there is a newborn that can’t travel at the speed of the herd. 

In this case the mother is forced to decide where to put her mind, with the herd or the newborn. Even if they decide to stay, they don’t do as good of a job mothering as when the herd is calm because they keep going back and forth to staying or going. 

This is why it is so important for us as stockman to create a mindset in our herd to learn to respond to the pressure created by the handler. This only can happen through pressure and release of pressure to help the animal to learn to respond properly. 

This happens with three pressures. Driving, drawing and maintaining pressures. 

It is easy to understand driving pressure, but it is never ending learning at how to get the driving pressure more effective. 

Drawing is the same. Easy to understand shaking a feed bucket and the animal comes to you. There is so much more to it, and you really need to work at it if you want to get animals to understand coming to you without a feed reward, and if using a feed reward, having the driving pressure to control the draw. 

Maintaining pressure is what we are talking about with the herd. They don’t want to leave or go, but wait to respond to your pressure as a draw or a drive, and think their way to the transition without over responding. You create the intensity of the response. That’s when we can control our animals to respond the way we need to get our desired results. 

Just like the horse I am riding, if I can’t control the speed and mind of the horse, and the intensity of the pressure it creates to the animals I am connecting with, I won’t be able to communicate as effectively as I need. 

These videos show cows with new calves that can keep their mind on the new born, but also respond to my pressure and the draw of the herd.