Category Archives: Stockmanship

Am I a hypocrite?

There is a lady involved with the beef industry that is very willing to share her opinions on all sorts of social issues. A while back she pretty much stated that we men needed to grow a pair and start acting like men. So I will, and the first thing I will say is that’s no way for a lady to talk, but it sure did get me to thinking about things.

Her statement caused my mind to ask myself this question. Am I a hypocrite? That is a tough one because it will make you really get honest with yourself (unless of course, you’re a hypocrite to yourself about your own honesty to yourself).

I have many strong opinions about what I feel is right and talk about being right, but do I live them? I actually feel pretty good about most of what I do and feel like I am honest with you and myself.

In thinking all this over, it caused me to create some thoughts that may be helpful for you to think about.

What is my purpose in life and am I fulfilling that purpose? I feel real private about a lot of things, but like to share my opinions with others.

I don’t really know what my purpose in life is. I have not got that one figured out just yet. I do know that so far my job for lot in life has been the training and care of animals that are involved in food for humans and horses that used for pleasure or in the production of animals.

I am real happy about that. I don’t know why but I have always had a compassion for animals. I have always had some kind of a dog in my life, and for some reason dogs seem to enjoy being around me. I like that. I am fascinated with cats. They are a very hard animal to figure out. Some cats really like being around me, but some want nothing to do with me. I want to get to a point that all cats like to be around me.

Some people would think of me as a hypocrite because I say I care about animals, but I eat them (I don’t eat dogs or cats, I hope …) or am not against rodeo. Other people would say I am a hypocrite because I am not sure ranch rodeo is a positive thing for the beef industry and the natural horsemanship movement has not been the best thing for the horse.

I am not saying these things to offend anyone, but simply giving my take on things from the way I see it. People can do whatever they want to do in our society. If it is against the law and if they are caught they will be punished in some way. All I am doing is voicing my opinion on what I think will create improvements.

That may be my purpose in life. My wife and I have purchased many places in our 25 years of marriage. I am proud to say we have improved each place considerably in the time we owned them. I have thrown my leg over lots of different horses in the last 50 years and hopefully I have made improvements to most of them. In the last 20 years or so I have hopefully made improvements in the way people communicate with animals and other people. Yep, I know “improvements” is my purpose in life.

Lets get back to the animal subjects …

How can I say I care about animals but still kill them for food?

To be honest I never even thought about this for a big part of life. I have been in the cycle of life and have seen nature’s harshness with death from predators or old age and have seen how slow, painful, and inhumane this process can be. Growing up with a grandfather that was a butcher, helping him slaughter since I could go with him, and seeing how much more effective he was at a quick and fearless death than nature, it never even entered my mind that what we were doing was wrong. We had cared for the animals, provided them with shelter and feed, which was our purpose in the deal and in turn, they did the same for us. We gave them a good quality of life, better than what they would have had if we were not involved, and in return they gave us a better quality of life in the form of food and shelter just as we provided for them.

Animals either don’t know what death is and aren’t afraid of it. If they did or were they would act very differently before they are harvested. They would not walk calmly up the chute to their death. Animals do have fear and to me we need to handle the animal in a way that keeps it from being afraid as much as possible.

Agricultural animals can take incredible amounts of discomfort. They can survive at extremely cold temperatures, have broken bones or body parts cut off and in a very short time get back to normal behavior. The worst thing that I see for animals is fear. I don’t think the pain of branding or castrating is inhumane to animals, but the fear it creates probably is. This is why it is important to be very effective a doing these processes. To brand an beef animal with a hot iron, it should take less than thirty seconds and be done. If it must be done do it properly and quickly then get the animal back to the herd to feel safe.

When a predator attacks the fear is extreme and can last a long time. If I raise the animal in a way that reduces stress, increases quality of life, and ends the life quickly and with the least fear and pain possible, while keeping natures natural cycle in harmony, I don’t feel I am being a hypocrite, but a true animal activist.

I used to rodeo and rode bucking horses and bulls. I really miss having the physical skill to ride bareback horses. I don’t miss riding bulls, it probably ranks up there with the dumbest things I have ever done. If I care about animals how could I do that? Most guys that ride bucking horses have the utmost respect for the horse, and have a lot of feel for the way a horse is handled and treated.

The way I see it, the bucking horse has the highest quality of life of all horses I have seen, including the wild horse. Most performance and pleasure horses get to much nutrition and not enough exercise. Many are kept in small enclosures and are in small numbers so the natural social order does not happen. Many trained horses are constantly being put under pressure to perform under high pressure training regimens and some get no exercise at all with little to no social interaction because of the human taking such good care of them, as if they were a human.

If you study the life of most bucking horses, they are raised in a herd, with lots of room to roam, get a pretty good balance of nutrition, and don’t have to work or be stressed for long periods of time like pleasure and performance horses. When they are learning to be performing bucking horses, they can have quite a bit of stress until they learn how to work in the system. The quicker they learn the easier it gets, so it is important to train them to the system.

Many of the problems that show up in performance and pleasure horses, such as soundness, disease and stress induced vices, are very rarely found in bucking horses. They live and perform longer as well. To me this is fact that the bucking horse has the best quality of life in the horse world. There may be more risk of injury because of the extreme energy they put out for 30 or 40 seconds, but this is actually what keeps them healthy, the short periods of high stress is exactly what nature does to keep an animal aware of danger, and healthy enough to do something about it.

As I look at rodeo, it appears to me that folks don’t see the big picture. Would I be a hypocrite if I justified tie-down roping? I don’t know if I can justify it and am not trying to, but I will give some observations. If we break roping and tying a calf down into its component parts it makes it easier to analyze. The horse and rider chasing the calf create fear so the calf runs. It is proven that an animal has one main thought at a time, so if the calf is running, that is a natural thing for calves to do, and as long as it is not for to long of a period of time it does not over stress the animal. If it is caught, this is the only time in the run when pain is really involved. The horse stops, the calf keeps running and he is stopped by the rope. It used to be the calf was jerked over backwards because of the sudden stop, but calf ropers have learned to not jerk them hard to keep them on their feet to get a faster time.

If you watch a bunch of cows and calves together, and a new calf that is only hours old try to suck the wrong cow they get butted or kicked real hard, and it does not hardly phase them. Calves take way more punishment from other cows than they do from the sudden stop of the rope.

The next thing that happens is the cowboy runs down the rope. This creates fear in the calf and it again thinks about and tries to run away. After the roper gets a hold of the calf, he flanks him down. To be honest this is when the cruelty can happen. If he is flanked real high and hard, it could knock the air out or stun the calf. When a calf or any fleeing animal is on its side and restrained they will struggle briefly and then usually give up and lay quiet.

Mother Nature has created this. When a prey animal is caught they struggle for a while then give up and go somewhere else with the mind. This is the way animals deal with the fear of attack. You can see this in a tie down roping run. If the roper flanks smooth, strings the front foot quickly, then scoops the hind legs low and firm the calf does not have time to struggle. When the roper gets of the calf the may struggle a couple of times then lay quiet until untied. Many times after the run the calf almost walks or trots off in a better state than when he started.

All this takes from 7 to 30 seconds. Now there are some things we could do to minimize the jerk of the rope like a calf collar to reduce the ropes pressure on the neck. That may help but I have to remember that the calk takes more abuse from its own mother or other cows. If the horse overworks this would be helpful in keeping the rope from choking the calf.

Of all the timed events tie-down roping is the most criticized. It used to be called calf roping. This is why it is thought to be the most abusive, because you are dealing with young, cute calves. In my opinion it is the least abusive of all timed events that involve cattle. The one that gets the least mention is the one that I feel is the hardest on cattle and that is team roping. Team roping steers are big and look tough with their horns. When you have a horse that weighs 1200 pounds plus, and a steer that can weigh well over 500 pounds and you are going around 20 miles per hour, and you rope that animals hind foot or feet and you dead stop it all that is a bunch of stretch from his heels to his horns.

I point these things out to show, in the way I truly and factually believe animals deal with stress, pain and fear.

I am not a big fan of ranch rodeo. I like most of the people involved, admire the skills the competitors have perfected, love the tradition and gear, but I cannot find a way to justify the events. All the things they do in a ranch rodeo pretty much go against everything we try to promote with the Stockmanship and Stewardship program the National Cattleman’s Beef Association sponsors. These practices are not what I envision as what the customer sees as Beef Quality Assurance. I am not saying they are wrong for doing it, and don’t think ill of someone that promotes or participates in it, but I would be a hypocrite if I tried to justify it.

The difference between rodeo and ranch rodeo is the events. Rodeo animals can be patterned and trained to accept the pressure and the events are quick. Lots of pressure under 10 seconds, then back to the herd. If you look at ranch rodeo there is quite a lot of wild chasing and quite a bit of stress on the cattle and really no way to pattern or train the cattle before, and the pressure can last quite a while. With ranch rodeo the real good competitors get it done quick and effectively, but many times things don’t go as good for some, and these circumstances create what I see as the problem. Professionally run rodeos have become very strict with rules and time limits and are quick to punish for animal abuse. This is the way it must be.

I would be a hypocrite if I did not give my honest point of view on this. I will probably make some folks mad about this subject, and for that I am truly sorry. I have learned the hard way that when you say what you believe it can cause friends, or who you thought were friends, to get real upset.

It is interesting to explore the different ways people think we should care for and use animals. I like to visit with vegetarians and animal activists that will give me a chance to discuss my reasons for believing in and doing the things I do. If you can keep from being in a confrontation, but keep it in a discussion, it really helps them see things from my point of view. I think the better I get at this the closer I will be to getting to pet more cats, and as I said before that is real important to me.

~ Curt Pate

Climate change

At first it was ” global warming ” now it more common to be discussed as ” climate change.”

I have been watching people’s reaction to this for quite sometime. I am seeing less resistance to acknowledging that something is up with the climate, but not much change in the opinion on either side of the argument.

I will tell you right now I have no idea what is happening. This same thing may have happened 1000 years ago, or may have never before. I do believe Mother Nature has a way of taking care of herself. When man gets in the way of her job she always seems to take care of it in another way, and if we would have listened to her and learned from the past cycles we would have benefited.

In the Western forests we have a huge die off of timber because of the pine beetle. With forests the cycling of nutrients is what makes it work. Fire, blow downs, insects and animals all help with the balance in nature. Man can help to maintain the balance or hinder it.

When we took control of the management of the forest, mostly with the suppression of fire or the wrong kind of logging, Mother Nature took over and said I need more nutrients to put back in the soil and her solution, the pine beetle. We have learned so much in the way we manage our forests. The managers of the past were trying to do wrong, it was just that they could not know the damage they may have been causing until the mistake was made to learn from.

Most of the time when humans are dealing with natural resources we have a two sided split of take more or take less. At first both sides are to the extreme and time creates the balance that is needed. The big challenge is to not making mistakes so big that Mother Nature must go to extremes or it takes so long to repair the damage that the whole ecosystem is thrown out of wack causing changes in plant and animal population.

From what I have seen from the past and the power of Mother Nature, I am not worried about the environment as much as the ones that are messing with the balance of it.
The United Nations predict we will have billions more people on the world in the next 40-50 years. The people that know about forests predicted we would have a bunch more trees in our Western ecosystem as well.

I always try to look at what I call the big picture such as what is happening with the human race that is positive and what can we do to improve our quality of life while not creating poor quality of life for our future generations.

When I look at the over consumption and waste of us “civilized folks” I get a little embarrassed. In times past, the royalty and the very rich were the only ones that lived life of excess and waste. Now a great percentage of our population live the life of royalty, and a small percentage live a life non-abundance. The big question should be, “How much does it take to have a good quality of life and while we are having this good life, how can we improve it for the future?” It looks to me as if we should try to manage consumption and life like we manage our pastures.

So this brings me to the critics of beef, and how they say the beef industry is adding to the problem of global warming, which is causing climate change.

Before the Industrial Revolution, or even before man, the ecosystem worked in a wonderful balance of growing things out of the earth, then sunshine and all the other energy from the sky was captured by these plants. These plants had to break down to feed the things that had no way to get the energy from the sun and sky. The purpose of lightning is to break up the nitrogen in the atmosphere and it is taken up by plants to get it back to where it is needed. In forests, fires and other predators break down the fiber to go back into the earth. With grass, fire and grazing animals have been the harvesters of nutrients to break down the fiber. This is why cows are not better converters. The manure has great nutrient density to go back into the soil. Before the west was settled it had millions of bison, as well as elk, deer and other grazing animals.

To me it seems this is what made the environment work. Just because we have messed up the balance since the invention of the internal combustion engine, should we get rid of a valuable piece of the environmental balance?

I read a book called Freakonomics several years ago. They looked at things in a simple numbers type of analysis. It taught me to look at things how they really are, not just how they appear.

They looked at the gun issue. One of the big arguments of hand guns is the accidental death of children. The image of a child dying from a gunshot wound is almost unbearable. If you look at it from a statistical point of view way more infants per thousand die from drowning in man-made swimming pools than by gunshot. I don’t hear much talk about swimming pool control or banning them.

Let’s look at professional sports. How much energy does it take to run a season of football?What does that do to the environment? The horse industry uses huge amounts of our natural resources and puts lots of diesel smoke in the air. I am not saying we should not do these things, just that we have many more critics of the beef industry than most anything. Yet, at least it is providing balance in the environment and providing nutrition for a good bit of our population.

I was at a large feedlot recently and we were loading finished cattle to go to harvest. The cattle were of excellent quality and they walked on the semi very nicely. As they went on the truck I got to thinking that all the feed, petroleum, time, and infrastructure that is the beef industry was loading in front of me. This was the end product that all the production has lead up to.

Several years ago I read in Allan Savory’s book on holistic management that if the amount of energy to produce a kernel of wheat is more than the energy that comes out of it, then world is out of balance. It hit me that our finished beef is the same scenario. To me this must be the question we ask for any natural resource we are harvesting for consumption.

From what I have been told feedlots as a whole are very efficient. They have gotten very good at feeding and caring for animals in the maximum use of resources to convert this to protein. They can do this in large numbers that fit with the huge demand for high quality beef. From what I have seen, beef cattle in the feedlot are well cared for, and if the weather conditions are not extreme, they are content to eat, sleep and be happy. If you don’t see things for what they really are, either because you can’t see the whole picture or don’t want to, you won’t believe me.

For someone driving by a feedlot at 75 miles an hour, that can see the dust and smell the smell, and see all the pens full of animals, you probably won’t be able to see this. I don’t blame you, but all I am saying is that the cattle are living an easy life that everything they need is provided for them, and that is what a beef animal needs. I don’t have the resources or knowledge to speculate on the energy in, energy out scenario I spoke of earlier, but I sure hope someone does and is honest about it.

Here is what I think is the perfect production model for the beef industry. We need to manage the cow-calf and the stocker portions in a way that keeps the natural balance with nature’s ecosystem. We should always remember this is the first priority of grazing animals. We must harvest animals or the balance will be off because of too many animals. This is also the problem with the wild horse population in the west. It is out of balance, and people driving by at 75 miles per hour can’t see it.

We produce an abundance of grains in the US, Canada, and Mexico. If we don’t feed it to animals, what will we do with it? At this point in time we need to feed this to animals to convert it to human food in the form of protein. We need to do this in a way that is environmentally stable, and we must be producing a product that the consumer can benefit from on the health side and want to consume to help keep the numbers in balance to make it all work. The thing that scares me is that with climate change causing commodities to become more expensive, and fossil fuels becoming more expensive, the current system may not be profitable. If we don’t have profit in the feeding sector it could force us to discover a new business model for beef cattle.

We may have less cattle that stay on grass longer, or different genetics that finish easier. The main thing we must protect in my opinion is the need for grazing animals to keep the balance.

My grandfather was a butcher and I grew up on grass fed beef. My wife and I enjoy the challenge of finishing beef on forage to get a great eating experience. In my opinion it is a real skill to get a quality product on grass alone. Many say this is the best way to raise beef for environmental stability, many say it is not. At this time in the world there is a place for both.

Some folks don’t like the flavor of grass fed. I feel we are finding the balance. When I am home I enjoy beef raised on grass. When I am on the road I love a good grain-fed steak. The reason I like them both is because I feel they are actually good for the environment. My mission in life is to make sure all animals have a good quality of life while they serve their purpose on this earth. We in the industry should be very careful of criticizing the other product just for marketing purposes.

I feel the real problem in the affluent societies is that we are living way to high on the hog. There is so much that we have but don’t really need. We go to much, eat to much, drink to much, borrow to much, and the things we eat, drink and borrow for don’t make us happy or content so we eat, drink and spend some more.

Just look around you. How much stuff do you have that you don’t need or how much do you do that really makes you happy. We all need to slow down and smell the roses and figure out what really adds to our quality of life. I feel credit cards and borrowing money have created more to climate change than all the cows in the world.

I am not saying we should live like we are in the poor house. Have the very best that you can afford for a high quality life. Waste is a terrible thing, and is really a lack of discipline. It looks to me like the past 50 years or so has been about getting as much material things as possible. I think the younger generations have watched this and see it is not the best and are not as material hungry as the my generation. This will truly add to the quality of life and reduce the human impact on the worlds natural resources.

Ranching is a interesting life. The thing is you may have a million dollars in assets, but you can’t afford to buy groceries because all your money is tied up in the assets. This creates a very frugal lifestyle that teaches you to enjoy the important things in life while conserving resources that you can’t spend money on. When you do get some money you have learned the habit of conservation and not spending money on things you don’t need.

We all need to do our part to make this environment work. All sides need to quit trying to get our own needs or desires filled and do what is right long term. This is not something to take lightly. Never underestimate Mother Nature’s ability to protect herself.

Are you a positive to the balance, or a negative?

I am going to eat a steak tonight to help the balance.

~ Curt Pate

Balance

Feel, timing and balance – this discussion all started from my desire to preserve and improve the American Western style of horseback livestock handling and management.

This is very important to me. My people have been livestock people for as long as I can find in the past and my children are both choosing to go forward with livestock in the future. I truly feel it is what my whole life has been set up to do, and now I feel it is time for me to share the knowledge I have accumulated to give people that are interested more options to think about and hopefully act upon.

The challenge is as humans we have the the mental ability to use all the things available to us to become very powerful. If we are not careful the power becomes the main desire and we over use this power to create what we think we need and want. If a person is not careful this power becomes addicting or habit and what is pleasure at the moment can lead to problems in the future.

We need this power to survive as humans, and the world needs us to to use this power in BALANCE to survive. As I look to all the disagreement in the world most of it seems to come back to the use of this power.

In livestock management the amount of skill you have in controlling the feeding and handling of this stock creates success or failure. In some society’s the animals are very gentle and easy to manage, and in others the animals are closer to the wild animals that grazed the environment before them.

On the western ranges of North America, because of the feral cattle being wild it created the need for power to overcome the animals ability to escape pressure. This is what created the skills of the cowboy. (For this discussion lets call everyone who works cattle horseback a cowboy.)

The ability to create a horse that is more athletic than a cow and the skill of using a rope or whip to aid in the management of cattle were essential to being successful at profitable ranching in the early days of ranching. Today we still need these skills in some situations, but because of modern facility design, smaller pastures and enclosures, and modern advances in technology not everyone has to be a cowboy in the cattle business.

To me you must use what works best for your personality. Beef cattle are stronger, faster and have more stamina than the human. The horse is stronger, faster, and has more stamina than the bovine. The human must use its brain to outsmart the cow, or to train the horse to outmaneuver the cow.

The skills of the cowboy are very admired. What I call being a good cow fighter is very well thought of in most ranchers’ minds. It takes a bunch of dedication and skill to get this power over a beef animal. Good horsemanship skills, good roping skills, and reading a cow are very important in the fighting of the cow.

This is all great, but what if we could change things just a bit, change the feel and timing of pressure, to create a more balanced approach to getting the critter to do what we want. If you don’t want to change because then you would not get to rope as much or have the high power horse skills in use as much, I understand. You are not in the business for profit, but for lifestyle. And you are also saying you like to be hard on livestock. When you rope cattle in the pasture, throw a trip on ’em to doctor them, you are being hard on ’em. When you yell, scream, slap your chaps and run into the bunch to get ’em through the gate, you are being hard on them and teaching them to be afraid.

I like to think of a good cowboy the same way I have heard a good black belt karate master should be. The black belt has spent years accumulating skills to have the mental and physical ability to have power over other humans. If they don’t use this power in balance it would create many problems. They could end up in prison or dead if they become to aggressive with their skill. From what I understand the black belt develops these skills but does all he can not to use them, except in a controlled match. This is how he tests his ability to use the skills, so in a real life situation he is ready to use the power.

What we are talking about with effective cattle handling is the ability to use feel and timing to get an beef animal to go where we need them to go. The better you handle the cattle the better trained they become and the less pressure it takes to handle them. If they have not been trained, or have learned to escape from bad handling, then you should have the skills (power) to get the animal to do what you want. This is when the balance of power is important.

For me personally, at one point in my life I thought the use of my cowboy skills was the most important thing to develop, and it was. But what I have found with experience (another word for mistakes) is that I overused the skills because I was good at them and did not know how good it felt to get something done with feel. My personal satisfaction and profit level have increased and chance for injury or death have decreased.

What helped to get me to that balance was being around good stockman that understood the balance. I had the skills, that’s why I had the job. The boss’s job was to keep me in check and to balance my cowboy powers with the feel it took to do the job right.

These days I am learning ways to work with animals in harmony as much as possible. Time and experience have helped me learn to balance pressure with animals and humans. There are times when neither will cooperate and that is when more pressure is needed. If you don’t have the pressure available to you, you will either not get it done or have to hire someone that does have the ability to get it done.

Cowboys come in all different styles. In every style there are a few that have learned feel, timing, and balance. This earns them the title of a “top hand.” Not just from other cowboys, but from all involved, and that is real important. I hope you are one or are working hard at becoming one.

If we use balance in our gift of humans having power over other animals the rewards are many. If we get power hungry the instant satisfaction is usually followed by future problems. This is not exclusive to cowboys, but to all humans and all aspects of life. Balance may be the secret to the highest quality of life.

Find it.

~ Curt Pate