Tag Archives: family

Keeping a Mama Cow a Mama Cow

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. 

Tribe Ranch Beef: Horseback or on Foot?

I try to get to Tribe Ranch once a month or so to work with them on horsemanship and stockmanship skills. They have gone zero to 60 very quickly and have created a ranch, cowherd and the skills to improve all aspects with great stewardship principles and practices. It’s my job to keep pushing them to get better and I love to challenge Robert and the crew on there skill of horsemanship and stockmanship.

They have gotten real good at putting livestock through the system. We worked the cows and calves through on foot, and the finishing steers horseback. I feel much safer and more effective horseback. The challenge is if you are new to riding horses and working cattle there is to much to think about on both sides to be effective. They are now at the level that they can be effective horseback and working in tight situations that require being in the right place at the right time.

I have video of both for a comparison, and there is lots of things for you to see and think about to see if you agree or disagree. The tub doesn’t work very well the way it’s set up, and it doesn’t work at all if you put to many cattle in it. The back gate on the hydraulic chute is designed so it’s to slow to get an animal stopped easily so they can’t put more than one in the lead up before the chute

I think it would be good to take the tub out and put a bud box in, and put a slide gate in for one animal in behind the chute. By not using the tub gate you can only take three or four animals and get them lined up right to go in. It’s fun and high skill and makes for good stockmanship skill building. There is lots of back and forth because of the small numbers of animals at a time.

I don’t like to,store animals in an alley. I feel it is much less stressful taking cattle out of a pen, but it can be thought getting them out and keeping up with three or four at a time. I really believe alleys, tubs, and boxes are pass throughs rather than storage areas to keep animals flowing and the stress level low.

I hope there’s something of value to you in the videos.

Get hooked on animals

After thinking about this addiction thing, it is becoming clear to me I am addicted to handling animals.  Just about everything I do in my life has to do with animals or people that work with animals.

I was very lucky growing up the way I did.  My Grandfather always had me help him take care of the chickens, feed the sheep and cows, and I went with him as much as I could when he would haul, buy, and sell cattle at the livestock auction.  Everything we did evolved around the care of livestock.

When I visited my Grandpa Ed and Granny Alice it was at a huge feedlot.  Everything there was about riding horses and working cattle and going to rodeos.

In my youth it was all about the care of animals.  My grandfathers, my mother, and stepfather were just incredible at taking care of animals. The animals always came before anything else in our lives.  This was a great influence on me.  We had a hog operation that I just loved.  I could pretty much take care of the sow barn and the finishing pens.  Someday I want to have pigs again.

We also had a custom slaughter house and meat cutting business.  I did not like it but I sure learned a lot about the meat side of the business.  My main jobs were hauling guts and salting hides, and that was just fine with me.

Every one I was around was very much into the care of animals but not really into the handling of animals.  They just got it done.

When I started getting real interested in horses and horsemanship the addiction started.

From then on I made all my decisions and work involve working with horses and grazing animals. If I had to irrigate I did it on a colt and learned it is a great way to get a horse real good.  I don’t put up hay, but graze intensively.  This allows me to work with the animals much more.  When I don’t know what to do, I go do something with animals.

I feel I am addicted to working with animals.  It is not as good always as I’d like but I keep working at it.  For a long time my work with cattle was about cowboy skills with a real emphasis on roping.  That was real good, but now my focus has really gone to getting animals to work better, and I am really focusing on getting the animal content mentally.

To me this is real satisfying to my addiction. I still like to rope, but working on getting animals to really trust me and want to be around me is my real goal.

I think this is a healthy addiction and am glad my addiction has turned into my work.  It seems to me that many of the people I observe involved with animal agriculture or horsemanship get so involved in the care and performance of the animal that they miss the the mental part.  The important thing to realize is that if the animal is not content you may not be getting the performance you are seeking.  You may not be as content as you could be with your involvement with animals. I hope you will search for a better deal as long as you are working with animals.  I hope you get addicted.

~ Curt Pate