Stockmanship – Gathering – Team Penning – Working and handling cattle effectively
Horsemanship can be defined as the art of handling horses in a respectful way, like how horses handle or relate to each other in the herd.
Along those same lines, stockmanship can be defined as the art of handling cattle and other livestock in a respectful way and using a low stress manner.
This technique goes back to the time of the historic cattle drives from Texas to other areas of the West. These long-horn cattle were mostly wild and there were no fences to stop the animals if they took off on a stampede.
To be successful cowboys had to learn to understand and think like wild cattle. They had to learn to handle huge herds in a low stress way through observing how the animals interacted within the herd. Today we use stockmanship or “low stress handling of livestock” as an efficient way to handle animals based on the principles of among other animal professionals like the late Bud Williams and Temple Grandin.
Learning the basics of gathering, handling and moving livestock
From mid-June through September, we have a small herd of Angus cattle grazing our pastures along Shell Creek. Given interest you can sign up and join our wranglers in rounding up the herd, move them across the pastures through Shell Creek and bring them to our riding and team penning arena near our barn.
Low stress Team Penning
Given interest you can participate in team penning on horseback. Keep in mind that also during Team Penning we keep low stress stockmanship in mind to keep the herd and horses’ calm.
On the contrary to what most people think, cattle drives are done slowly and gently instead of “yahooing” and pushing the herd hard. On some occasions one will need to push the cattle herd (example going up a steep slope), however most of the time “slow is fast and fast is slow”
Cattle Drives vs Cattle Work
On working ranches, we generally speak about “cattle work”. Cattle work is the term that summarizes all the different types of handling and activities that take place on a working cattle ranch. This includes driving or moving cattle from one area to another and effectively working with livestock in corrals and pens.
Occasionally we help local ranchers move cattle, but this is not a planned exercise, nor do we have exact dates when this happens. All depends on grazing, animals and work that needs to be done on the ranch.
