ArrowQuip, a livestock equipment manufacturer asked if I would write something for their website. I thought I would share it here. I’m not sure they are going to use it, but it’s important to understand how much improvements have been made in animal handling by manufacturers creating working systems. All systems are not created equal, and what works for you may not work for someone else. So here are some thoughts from my perspective of what to know before you make decisions on what to use.

This is a system that I have been working on for my situation.  I like having an alley around a round pen.  It’s a great place to lope a colt the first time, exercise bulls, and train and work animals effectively, and I and Bob Studabaker are figuring out some remote gate ideas to where I can work and sort animals out of round pen and sort by myself.  For me this is a great system for all the things I need.

Working facilities

There is much debate lately on different systems to get cattle into a chute or crush, or loaded on a vehicle for transport. There are lots of cattle loaded in the world everyday, so this is a very important subject.

I feel if you break things down into the component parts it gets much easier to make decisions on the whole.

The most important thing to remember is that the better you prepare your livestock to work, the better any system will work. Learn how to teach your animals to work properly, take the time to get them ready to work, and allow the time to work safely and effectively.

From what I can see there are four pieces to this puzzle.

Safety of humans and animals
Animal welfare
Efficiency of system
Cost
Safety

Bull riding is most likely the most dangerous activity when dealing with bovine animals. They say if you are making a living riding bulls, it’s not if your going to get hurt but how bad. This is true because of the close contact with very active and powerful animals.

Milking cows is most likely to be one of the least dangerous activities when dealing with bovine animals. Once patterned and trained to the milking routine dairy cows are safe to work around. If there is an injury it is usually a mistake made by the handler of having a body part in the wrong place at the wrong time.

These two extremes show us the better we understand pressuring animals, and the better the facilities we use for putting this pressure on, and the better our cattle understand how to work, the safer and more efficient it is.

I’ve worked lots of bucking bulls and it is much safer to not have to be in a small area with them. I have also worked with lots of dairy cows and you many times must be in with them to get them to move where they need to be pressured.

We need a facility that works for the specific animal we are working with. In some situations we will be working with all different types of animals, such as an auction facility or feedlot. We need to be able to put the proper pressure on to get the animal to work and stay safe, as well as keep the animals safe from injury and achieve the highest beef quality.

Animal Welfare

This has always been an important part of the livestock industry. Good stockman have always been aware of animal welfare. They have known that animals that are provided proper nutrition, a healthy environment, and as little fear as possible, will preform as well as genetically capable. This creates high quality of life for the animal as well as high profit potential. The highest fear point is created from excessive pressure that causes fear, and can turn to anger. This is why training animals to accept and work from proper pressure, and creating facilities that animals can flow easily from pressure is so important for animal welfare.

Efficiency Of System

Domesticated livestock need to be moved from point A to point B. If point B is a desirable place that the animal wants to go it takes very little pressure to get them to point B. The less desirable point B is the more pressure it takes to put them there. Imagine a working chute or loading chute out in the middle of a 40 acre pasture. It would not be impossible to get them in the chute, but it would take quite a bit of training and time to get them to walk into the chute. It would take a very high level of skill and time to get it done. The more animals you needed to work the more challenging success would be. The reason it would be so difficult is that we would have to create more pressure out in the forty acres than there is in the confinement of the chute. It is easy for the animal to escape our pressure in the 40 acres. If we put a 40 foot circular pen behind the chute, and put the animal in the round pen it would be easier to apply the pressure without the animal escaping us and it would look for relief of our pressure through the chute. We are able to put more forward pressure on the animal than the chute would be putting back. This would still require high skill and the animal could go through quite a lot of stress before it decided to go in the chute.

In both of these situations we need to pressure the animal from quite far behind the balance point to get the animal to go forward. The farther back you get to move an animal, the less you control the direction the animal goes. If we set up an alley and some sort of a pen that we can create and control the movement and direction of travel of the animals, we can use our pressure effectively to get the animal to go in the chute very easily. The better the system allows you to create movement and direction simultaneously the safer and more effective it becomes. It is more effective if you can create proper pressure and position for the type of animal you are working.

Cost

If you are in the livestock business for profit, return on investment and cash flow are very important. If it is a hobby, entertainment cost is the important thing.

In a for profit business, we must cost our facilities for number of animals worked. Time, safety, beef quality and life of use of facilities is important. The fewer animals worked it would seem the less facilities needed. This is important on the cash flow side, but not so on return on investment. How much is human safety worth? Bruising and injury in a poorly designed facility will injure animals no matter if you are working large numbers or few.

Good quality working facilities hold or increase in value, and many times they have a higher dollar value when sold than when purchased.

Working systems need to work. Not all systems work the same. Make sure you are getting equipment that you look forward to using and are safe doing it.

I wrote this a few years ago, and feel it worth sharing again.

As I look back and reflect on my life, and the things my Mother did for me, especially up to about the 15 year mark, and then it became a different kind of support and help, but she was always there.  It is so enjoyable for me to see all the influence my Mother had on me, and other people I know, and to see the influence they had on them.  

Roberta Frank (aka Bobby Wagner, aka “Mom)

YouTube clip of Mom eating sushi for first time.

Mothers Are Stockmanship and Stewardship
Mothers and wives are the real foundation of most family livestock operations. They are instrumental in keeping things organized, from book work to knowing what cow belonged to what calf, and could most likely point out the cow’s mother. Cooking for a crew is no problem. Serving as a counselor, bookkeeper, bill payer, nurse for man, vet for beast, driving truck, tractor, or riding a horse are just part of the deal.

I feel most women have more compassion for animals, and seem to get along better calving and lambing when it comes to mothering something up, grafting and suckling calves and lambs.

They probably are not willing to pressure animals as much as some of us men folk (I am not aware of any negative undercover video involving females). Most try to figure out a better way to work with animals, and very seldom lose their cool when working with them.

My mother Bobby Wegner kept our outfit together. Three good meals a day for family and crew. She always had a huge garden, canned vegetables (I love her pickled beets.), and got a big supply of groceries every fall. She was very good with horses, would wrap meat all day at the slaughter house, and still manage to do all her other duties at home.

She could drive truck, bale hay, cuss with the best of them when she was mad, get over her mad just as quick as she could get mad, and would take in any stray, animal or human.

She and My Stepfather Ralph Wegner, worked hard, played hard, went broke in the early 80’s, made it all back in the 90’s, and had a great time doing it.

I think my mother is the reason for my passion for animals. She had me horseback before I was born. Shortly after I was born she kept me riding horses, taking my sister and I to ride in parades, drill teams and rodeos. I always had chores to do, and she was real strict about doing them the right way at the right time.

I have many things to thank my Mother for – strong work ethic, compassion for animals, taking care of the land, taking me to bible school, and all the great fun things I got to do growing up on our place in the Helena valley of Montana.

The greatest gift my Mother has is her ability to make people feel good. She never met a stranger, always treated everyone the same when they came to our place, from sheep herders to bankers to movie stars.

I sure hope some of it rubbed off on me.

Take some time to think about what your Mother has really done for you, and take even more time to figure out what you can do for her. I’m not sure flowers will be enough.

~ Curt Pate

I’ve been watching this fella for a long time. He was horseback when he was four days old. I know because I was holding him. His first pony double barreled him in the chest, run him under trees and bucked him off. When he got it figured out, Rio and rial were a team and that pony started a young cowboy on the journey. I had a pony named PeeWee that did the same thing.

When I was doing horse clinics to make a living I spent a lot of time in the Midwest and started lots of Colts and did horsemanship clinics at Lee and Diane Sackett’s. I have lots of memories in that place. Rial was about 10 years old when we first started going there, and went there all the time he was growing up. I think he started his first colt there, and I’m sure a few other things happened that I don’t know about.

This past week He and his Mother did a clinic there together. I watched some of the video and it is great to see his approach at presenting to the horse and people. All the versatility he has learned in horsemanship from riding broncs to jumping fences to handling livestock have shaped what I think is a horseman that has much to offer horses and humans.

Watch Utube video.

He has always stepped up and took the bad ones when we would contract to start colts. I’ve watched him get really good at riding broncs. He can really rope. I have  also watched him cry like a baby when we had to put Rio, his pony down. He has a lot of feel.

It is so nice to see someone just get along and get things done without a lot of hype. I feel that horsemanship has gotten real extreme, and all about ego based training, so I am real proud that Rial has kept that out of his program. He gets results when it doesn’t look like he is doing much. He is thinking way ahead instead of right now results and I think that is very important in horsemanship.

The best thing is is that he thinks for himself. He has always been a little different in his way of thinking and doing things. It’s been fun to watch, is nice to see right now, and it looks like the future is helping animals and people. Stay tuned.