Working Ranch Magazine - Index

Working Ranch Magazine - magazine - Index

BORN TO BE WILD?
Cattle are hard-wired to bunch up
and flee. That’s what they do naturally
if they encounter a situation involving
something or someone that they perceive
as a predator. But sometimes
they choose to fight, even if their path
of escape is wide open, and being on
the receiving end of a 1400 lb cow’s little
temper tantrum can leave
a serious welt on the skinny
cowboy who finds himself
caught in her crosshairs.
We’ve all been there, laying
in a sorry heap with our
personal effects scattered all
over the ground, the scene
lightly dusted with a layer of
snoose spilled from an airborne
tin of Copenhagen. After those
little stars quit circling our heads we
tell ourselves, “You know, she had
every right to stomp the Play-Doh outa
me. I shouldn’t have tried to tag her
calf three minutes after it was born.”
Probably never will find the tagging
pliers.
76 |WORKING RANCH | JANUARY / FEBRUARY 2008
BAD REPORT CARD
Who wants a wild cow in the first
place? These days, not many people
will line up to take one off your hands.
It used to be, not that long ago, that
the cattle industry was very fragmented.
When a critter left the property it
was considered to be someone else’s
problem. If we could get a wild one on
Take my advice. Get rid of the
snakey, wild critters in your herd.
It’s the right thing to do, for the
sake of the folks that have to
handle that critter down the line.
the truck, then we accomplished our
objective. As long as the check cleared
we were good to go.
Old school thinking like that doesn’t
cut it anymore. Carcass and performance
data are getting easier to
track down, and one of the farthest
things from a cattleman’s expecta-
tions would be a negative statement
from a feedyard like, “The cattle in
your pen performed poorly, the rate of
gain was 6% less than their counterparts
for the same feeding period,
chronic musculo-skeletal injuries were
above normal, cattle were wild and
hard to handle throughout the feeding
period, incidence of bruising and
dark cutters was significantly
higher than their counterparts
at harvest.”
No rancher wants a bad
report card because it isn’t
very good for the ol’ reputation.
Buyers and feeders don’t
want cattle wild cattle like that
around because they’re a pain
in the management scheme.
Wild critters are always busting the
facilities, putting the cattle handlers in
harm’s way and generally upsetting the
delicate balance of the other cattle as
they flow through the system. It’s the
equivalent of having Dale Earnhardt Jr.
driving the handi-bus down at the
retirement home. Some things just
You can train a cowherd to act pretty much any way you want. These cows are doing exactly what they’re
supposed to be doing. But if you like things fast and out of control rent yourself a B-grade Western from the
‘50’s and watch it start to finish, then go out there and apply what you learned from the movie. In no time at
all you’ll have half a dozen jug-bellied leppies hanging around the horse barn looking for their daily handout.