Doug Ferguson sent us this story—

We repeatedly discuss the benefits of stockmanship. Never in my mind could I ever imagine that I’d be in the situation I was in last week, and my stockmanship skill came in handy.

I was driving across Nebraska on I80, going about 80 mph, when I got passed by a few cars like I was sitting still. Within a handful of seconds, we were slamming on our brakes and coming to a very hard stop. Just a couple hundred yards in front of me there was a pile up that blocked the road.

I sat there for roughly half an hour before one lane was opened up. Traffic began to flow through, but it was a lot of stop and go. I assumed it was because emergency vehicles were moving. I couldn’t see much with the cars in front of me. As I passed by the accident, it was one of those where you’re sure someone just died.

I then discovered the reason for stop and go traffic was because there were cattle on the road. The first responders, tow truck guys, and volunteer fire fighters were trying to make a semi-circle around them and hold them against the fence that runs along side the road. This was not working too well. The cattle were trying to run past their pressure away from the fence and kept getting on the road. As you can imagine, there were a lot of first responders, sirens, helicopters and so on, and they were trying to hold the cows in that same area.

I debated with myself if I pull over or drive on. I really didn’t want to be late to the cattle auction. I pulled over. A state trooper was not happy with me for stopping. I’ll put it this way, after an exchange of colorful words between him and I, I was finally able to convince him to, “let me take care of this problem over here (pointing at the cows). I’m good at what I do. I’ll eliminate the problem and make it safer for everyone. There’s too much pressure here for the cows to handle, just let me drive ’em up the ditch away from here.”

He was not convinced I could drive the cows myself, and so he had a tow truck drive along side me on the shoulder and a couple of other people walk along the side of the road, just in case
These were Holstein cows, and I have to say I’ve never seen Holsteins act up like these were, but they were having a really bad day.

I began driving them away from the commotion. It didn’t take long, probably less than 200 yards, and the cows started grazing as we were moving along. When I saw that, I knew I had won. Those cows were not going to go back onto the road.

A couple of guys showed up with trailers and panels to catch the cows. They didn’t have enough panels to get all the cows in at one time. While they loaded the first half of the cows, the other bunch started to lay down. That’s when I walked back to my truck and left.

[Note from Tina—]

As you know, Mom and I kicked “writing the book” into high gear at the beginning of January. We’ve been building time-lines, collecting resources, writing schedules, and recording stories. One of the resources we had was a big envelope of letters Mom had written to our good friends Rich and Carolyn Hunt in Northern California between 1978 and 2005. Carolyn saved those letters and returned them to Mom for the express purpose of using them for the book! I finished typing them in last week, and they were full of great stories on their own as well as insights into other stories Mom will flesh out.

One item I found interesting, and a little sad, was this part from a letter Mom write September 5, 1989 when Dad was just breaking out of his first “retirement” and really getting into teaching large numbers of people. Mom write:

“One of the things they are having trouble with is the cattle don’t settle down and enjoy their new paddock. They either walk the fences or go over them. They don’t pick up their calves when they move the cattle to a new paddock, so they have to leave the gates open between several paddocks which pretty well negates the whole idea. I guess the coyotes have gotten smart to the fact that when they move the cows out, the calves are easy pickin’s.”

The sad part is, we hear these exact words from attendees of our schools today even though Dad’s teachings (which reached an astounding number of ranchers for thirty years) showed exactly how to stop each of these challenging situations.

Richard and I were talking today about how, sometimes, it does get depressing to think that maybe we are fighting a losing battle. Maybe no one is listening as we carefully try and explain how to “get their minds right” and various other keys to Proper Stockmanship (that Dad also carefully explained in his many schools).

But then we were reminded of the call we got a few days ago from a student who had received a new load of calves, and one wasn’t eating yet. We talked with him about proper driving and working with them all, and yesterday he messaged us a shot of all the calves peacefully eating at the bunk!

This reminded us of the story of the Starfish Thrower. I googled a little to try and get the proper wording and found the story has actually been told and re-told in many different ways from the original book described here. However, I liked the version below I found on this web page.

A young girl was walking along a beach upon which thousands of starfish had been washed up during a terrible storm. When she came to each starfish, she would pick it up, and throw it back into the ocean. People watched her with amusement.

She had been doing this for some time when a man approached her and said, “Little girl, why are you doing this? Look at this beach! You can’t save all these starfish. You can’t begin to make a difference!”

The girl seemed crushed, suddenly deflated. But after a few moments, she bent down, picked up another starfish, and hurled it as far as she could into the ocean. Then she looked up at the man and replied, “Well, I made a difference to that one!”

The old man looked at the girl inquisitively and thought about what she had done and said. Inspired, he joined the little girl in throwing starfish back into the sea. Soon others joined, and all the starfish were saved.

— Adapted from ‘The Star Thrower’ by Loren C. Eiseley

I think this message fits in well as we come up to the 2019 Bud Summit, a gathering of “Budders,” subscribers to the stockmanship.com/subscription website, sharing the word about Bud Williams Proper Stockmanship (and Livestock Marketing).

Maybe, just maybe, there will come a day when every rancher will be able to drive his pairs to new paddocks and have them put their heads down and graze quietly. Until then, those of us teaching and sharing Dad’s methods will continue to throw the starfish and “make a difference to that one!”

[Note from Tina] Mom, Richard, and I have been talking about writing the book about Mom and Dad’s life for a long time now. Finally, we realized that, if we don’t start on it and really put some focus into it, it just won’t happen. Therefore, we have decided to not teach ANY Hand ‘n Hand Livestock Solutions schools in 2019 (except the 3 day Marketing and Stockmanship School in February just before the 2019 Bud Summit) so we can focus on collecting the information and writing the book.

Watch for notice that the book is ready to order!

I have been following a thread on another e-mail list comparing the mothering rating of the cow that tries to attack anyone who gets close to their new-born calf as opposed to the cow that is OK with this. The consensus seems to be that the mellow cow is not as good mother as the cow that will try to eat you. I disagree with this.

Bud and I found that when you work livestock properly – that is, by using pressure/release methods instead of force and fear, the cows learn to respect but not fear you.  Since they don’t feel you are a threat to them, they also don’t think you are a threat to their calf so they don’t “get on the fight” when you need to handle their new baby.

When we lived in Canada we were involved with a Beef Booster cow herd.  In case you aren’t familiar, this is a composite breed.  Some of the herds were rated “Maternal.” Their main function was to produce heifers to go into the cow herd, another raised “Terminal bulls” to use on the herds that would market all of their calves, etc.  The man we worked for had about 100 head of cows that were designed to raise “Terminal bulls.”  He wanted to change over to a “Maternal” herd so he swapped his herd with a neighbor.  When these cows were delivered the neighbor also delivered a list of ear-tag numbers of cows that would kill you if you tried to handle their baby calf.   The only way they could weigh and tag the calf was with a bucket loader on a tractor.  A man in the bucket would get the calf, then the tractor operator would try to raise the bucket before the cow could climb in, too.  We received these cows in October.  We handled them quite a lot.  If the feedlot shipped a pen of cattle and there was still feed in the bunks, we’d put these cows in the pen for a while to let them clean the bunk.  Through the winter we tried to move their straw bed every few days to make it easier when they farmed the ground in the spring.  This usually meant we had to drive the cows to the new bed a couple of times to discourage them from going back to the old one, etc.  When spring came the owner was able to weigh and tag every calf with no aggression from any of the cows.

The first year we worked on the elk ranch In Texas, we didn’t see an elk calf until it was a couple of weeks old.  The following year, the cow elk would bring their newborn calves with them when we drove through the pasture, scattering hay.  We even had one calf born in the corral.

An email from Steve Cote—I was going through some boxes this week and came across a forgotten old T shirt from 1996 or 7. It has never been worn because it was a special one because of the story behind it.

When I was working with the Morgan Creek Grazing Association in Challis, ID, we had gone to schools and one day I was riding on the allotment with Lloyd Bradshaw and Tim Westfall. We were looking out over cattle scattered over thousands of acres. While we knew we had to get them working, we knew we had to get them put together and handling well like he said but in reality, none of knew just where to start. After we talked about it enough Lloyd finally said, “Let’s put a little Bud on em” and off we rode.

After that whenever were rode to new bunches, that was the game plan “put a little Bud on ‘em”. Things went phenomenally well that year, we won many awards, and the Custer Soil and Water Conservation District decided to get everyone involved in the project a Bud Williams T shirt. They took a picture of us moving stock on the allotment with a logo across it. The printer got the saying partly wrong but the idea was right.

I know Bud’s name means something in livestock circles so just to set the record straight, Bud Williams Stockmanship does NOT endorse the BudFlow tub system.

Hello Eunice, I haven’t talked with you in quite awhile.  My name is Kevin Cherpin.  I have worked at learning proper stockmanship for years.  I was introduced to it in college, and took the course from Richard and Tina about 3 winters ago.  I work on a community pasture in south west Saskatchewan.  It has been difficult to find riders for our summer riding positions, let alone one that wants to work toward proper stockmanship.  I was curious if you, Richard, or Tina would know of anyone that would be interested in a job like that in Canada?  This will be a federal position for this upcoming summer so they would need to be a Canadian resident. They wouldn’t need a lot of experience as long as they were keen and willing.  Thank you for your time.

Kevin Cherpin – SW Saskatchewan
1-306-296-7706    kevincherpin@gmail.com

Recently I had an e-mail from Hellen Santos, a Brazilian journalist from Globo Television, the main TV network in Brazil. She was putting together a journalistic piece on a “Brazilian feedlot that had recently installed a Bud Box and had its team trained to incorporate Bud William´s technics on livestock handling” and asked if I would send her a video clip of Bud to include.

I had just sent a Stockmanship-Plus video to Denis Antonio, a MERCK employee in Brazil so I asked him about this. He was highly complementary of Globo Television and offered to send me a copy of the program when it aired. He not only sent me the link so I could view it, but he had his people translate and subtitle it in English. I think you will find it interesting.

A friend just forwarded this to me. . .

I just wanted to write you and let you know that I used LSLH [low stress livestock handling] for an application that you may never have thought about before.  On June 27th we had a lightening strike start our range land on fire.  The fire was moving fast but there was a paved road between the fire and the range ground where my cattle were so everyone thought they were safe.  Due to some crazy circumstances, the fire jumped the road and started roaring through where my cattle were.

I have to take one step back before I finish the story.  After I got back from the Republic workshop I hadn’t been crazy about how I had done, so I decided to double down my efforts.  I already handle my cattle a lot but at the workshop I identified some skills I was really lacking.  When I got back home I took my cattle somewhere every day and even if I just took them in a big loop, when I got them back home, I settled them.  By the way, when you start getting the hang of settling cattle, it feels pretty magical!  I have to admit, it still felt silly taking my cows “for a spin” but they seemed fine with it.

Fast forward back to the fire jumping the road:  I didn’t have time to saddle a horse, so I jumped on an ATV with my Border Collie and raced down the road to where the cows were.  First off, they were all within sight range of each other because I have been working with them to stay together. I don’t mean to anthropomorphize, but they seemed glad to see me, like “Oh good, she’s here to tell us what to do.”  I used the dog but I had good motion from the start, they mothered up, and went head to tail at a steady pace.  That good motion drew the few outliers in and they just fell into place.  They were quiet, there was no bawling, and they just moved calmly in the direction I asked them to.  In fact, the flames were coming so fast that I actually had to pick them up into a jog.  But even then, they just did a steady jog, no one ran.  I think about it so much, it seemed so amazing!  I took them two miles to an irrigated field where I placed and settled them.  The flames roared around the field (see picture) but they calmly stayed in the field.  I just want you to know that I feel like you (and Bud Williams) are the reason my cows are alive today.  It would have torn me up in so many ways if my cows had burned up–I can’t hardly stand thinking about it.  They were in 1,000 acres, so if they had been spread out I would have lost cattle. Also, if we hadn’t practiced going places beforehand I’m certain I wouldn’t have saved them all.  Thank you so much for what you do!!!!!  Gosh, I just can’t thank you enough!