Category Archives: Communication

Incentive to learn stockmanship

To create desire there must incentive. Incentive comes in many different forms, some being monetary, peer pressure, pride, tradition, fear, laws, quality of life, and influence from others to name a few.

Lets use the example of a foreign language. Many people in the U.S. want to learn to speak a different language, but never do it. If we use the example of an immigrant from Mexico, most learn to speak or at least understand English fairly quickly. There is much more incentive when you involve all the reasons mentioned above, for the immigrant.

For someone just wanting to be able to go on a trip to Mexico, even though we would like to speak the language, we don’t have enough incentive to do it, so we learn a few words and phrases and even though we aren’t completely satisfied, it gets us by.

Stockmanship and stewardship are similar. As previously discussed, both are learned skills.
There must be incentive to put forth the effort to improve the skill, and the opportunity to learn.

With stockmanship, we have seen a huge increase in its popularity. It would be rare these days to see a cattle industry magazine, that does not have some mention of cattle handling. The reason for this is we have incentive.

Things like more laws on animal care, technology influence (i.e. undercover videos), promotion by cattle organizations, customer demand are examples of these incentives. Finally I believe it is becoming acceptable to learn about animal handling.

This is peer pressure I am talking about. The movie about Temple Grandin was a great display of this. The ideas she presented in the feed yard came under terrible resistance, and I feel it is because of two main reasons. First, the cattle handlers felt they had the high level skills to make the cattle do what they needed them to do (i.e. cow fighting skills). What was being presented was a threat to the need for that skill and because this was coming from an outsider that was not part of their culture and tradition, they felt uncomfortable with it. Second, humans don’t like change, especially if it is to much too fast.

In the past ten years or so we have seen a shift in attitude towards stockmanship and stewardship. It has been proven the consumer wants to know animals are treated properly,
Stock will gain better, sick and death loss will be less, injury to animals and humans will be less, and it is easier to train people to work animals properly, in less time.

Take some time to figure out if you have the incentive and desire to improve.

Remember…”It’s the right thing to do,” for all the reasons I mentioned above, but I feel the most important factor that should cause you to want to improve stockmanship skills is the self satisfaction and fulfillment you get from improving the way you do things.

Some of best times I’ve had working has been handling cattle, and some of the worst have been handling cattle. As I gain more knowledge and skill the good times a getting even better and the bad are few and far between.

~ Curt Pate

Learning to learn

As I mentioned earlier, I spent much of my time with my grandfathers. Ed Pate, my dad’s dad, was a get ‘er done fella and was always cowboy. Whatever it took…he was willing to do and he had the skills to do it.

My mom’s father, Lenard Frank was just the opposite. He always called his cows to get them to change pastures, did not enjoy “cowboyin,” and was always figuring out ways to trick cattle into doing things. I spent most of my time with him. It worked out pretty well because he would always have me riding a horse he was trying to fix and sell (he bought and sold horses) so I could get the ones he couldn’t coax in.

They both were very different in how they handled stock, and I was real lucky to have learned from them both. It was not a formal training, but if you made a mistake you were made aware of it. They sure told me some things, but really did not know how to explain to me what they wanted because they really did not know how.

A fella by the name of Butch Anderson went to work for Sieben Livestock, a neighboring ranch. So I started hanging around him. He was a real interesting fella that did things different than anyone I had seen, and he would tell me things to really help. He had great dogs and was a good horseman. He really got me wanting to learn.

I was riding lots of horses but did not really understand much about training horses. I could always ride a bucking horse, was not afraid of anything, and could get a job done on a real unwilling horse.

I started hearing about horse training clinics. Someone told me about a fella that was going around and putting people on colts with nothing on the head of the horse. Well I tried it, not understanding anything about it, and somehow survived. Then I did something that changed my life. I went to a clinic put on by a lady named Rene Pippinich. She showed us things that I did not even know existed on how to get a horse working for you. From then on I could not learn enough about working with horses. I rode lots of them and never stopped learning.

I worked on some real good ranches that all I did was cowboy and worked hard to improve my horse skills as well as roping and cow fighting ability. I worked around some real good hands, went to more clinics, and was really making a lot of progress at becoming a cowboy.

What I was learning was horse skills on how to be a good cowboy. A bunch of us would gather in Sheridan, Wyoming every spring and rope and brand a good number of yearlings. One of the owners of the cattle, Pat Puckett had been to a cattle handling clinic put on by Bud Williams and was telling us some of the things he learned. It was very interesting to me, so he explained some of the idea’s and we would work on them while we were gathering and sorting. I was hooked.

So now I am working on horsemanship and stockmanship. Lots of things happened about that time, and it was not to long until I was doing horse clinics all over the country.

I went to Red Bluff for the gelding sale to do demonstrations. I was interested in working with dogs and they have a show and sale at Red Bluff. I met a fella by the name of Paul Miller there. He was a top dog man and we were discussing some of the problems I was having working with my dogs. He told me that the same things I was saying about working with horses and cattle would work with the dog. That was just what I was missing.

I had horses, cattle, and dogs separate. It is all quite similar, and by trying to separate them I was missing a bunch.

Learning is such an important part of life. Learning how to learn is most likely the skill that you will get more out of than any other.

I will share some thoughts on learning:

  • When I read or listen to something I don’t try to retain it all, but put it in my subconscious mind and let it work its way out when I need it. This way it becomes mine, and not trying to copy or mimic someone else.
  • When you complete a task, take time to think about how it went. Find the positives first, then things that could be better, than implement and follow through with a plan to improve. If you improve each time you do something, and if you do it enough, you have to get good.
  • Use technology. Information travels at the speed of light these days. What used to take years to become a shared idea now only takes seconds, and it can also include movies, diagrams, and all sorts of other things to make an idea easier to understand.
  • Video and photos are excellent tools to let you actually see what you are doing, right or wrong.
  • The only way to get real good at something is to do it. There have been studies that prove if you practice things properly, subconsciously or consciously you will get better. The thing you must do is “do.”
  • Try to learn a little bit all the time. If you get in the habit of saving money, you will end up with a bunch of money in the bank, but having a bunch of knowledge in your brain is yours to keep, and even if you give it away you have the same amount of knowledge in your bank(brain).
  • The best way to increase knowledge is to teach. Take the time to show someone how to do something, or explain it with written words and you will be amazed at how much is learned, by yourself and others.

To me learning is one of the great pleasures in life.

~ Curt Pate

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