This is part of a letter from Tina, our daughter. She and her husband Richard McConnell teach Low Stress Livestock Handling. See their webpage at www.handnhandlivestocksolutions.com.
. . . We are finally getting caught up from the Provenza Short Course and then speaking last Wednesday! Whew! The Short Course was really great. It was nice to visit with Bruce Maynard also.
[Bud and I met Bruce when he attended Stockmanship Schools that we put on in Australia in 1999 and in 2002. He also visited us in Texas for a One-on-One.]
He taught stockmanship stuff to the group while they were out at the experiment farm every morning doing their research stuff. . . . Bruce gave Dad full credit for everything he taught from the beginning. And, Fred Provenza mentioned Dad’s work a lot during his talks, both the stockmanship and the marketing.
We thought Bruce did a very good job with what he taught. He did the straight lines, T to the gate, NOT being a predator, etc. I didn’t hear/see anything that wasn’t right from what Dad teaches.
He had some great demonstration items too. At one point the group of about 10 of us were standing by this pen of lambs. He had us get in a straight line fairly near their pen, then had the ends move out into a curve around the lambs, and you could immediately tell they got uncomfortable with that. Very good demo of what the curves do mentally, above and beyond pressuring those outer animals so they have no where to go. . . .