{"id":2056,"date":"2017-06-26T13:27:13","date_gmt":"2017-06-26T18:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stockmanship.com\/?p=2056"},"modified":"2017-06-26T13:28:13","modified_gmt":"2017-06-26T18:28:13","slug":"predatory-stress","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/?p=2056","title":{"rendered":"Predatory Stress"},"content":{"rendered":"
I wrote this in answer to a post on Kit Pharo’s list, but thought it might be of interest to viewers of this site.<\/strong><\/em><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0At the risk of being the person with a hammer and looking at every problem as a nail . . .<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A great many handling and health problems in livestock stems from the fact that most of our livestock are prey animals and we are predators.\u00a0 No matter how\u00a0 slow or gentle or sneaky (dart guns) we are in moving or treating our animals, they continue to be stressed by that very fact.\u00a0 Bud learned how to handle animals in such a way that they don\u2019t consider us a predator.\u00a0 He probably put more pressure on the animals he worked than most people, since he expected crisp, energetic movement from them, but his body language and angle of pressure was such that their instinctive reaction was to go the way he wanted them to go.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Bud and I spent\u00a0the first years of our married life\u00a0working on large mountain ranches in\u00a0n\/w California.\u00a0 It was unheard of to have a sick calf while it was on the cow.\u00a0 No matter how badly the cattle were gathered and handled in the corral at spring roundup, when they were turned back out the cow was able to convince her calf that she could take care of things and there wasn\u2019t anything more to worry about.\u00a0 Now that most people never teach their cattle to drive\u00a0and are\u00a0moving them with feed, which necessitates getting the cows\u00a0so psyched up that they are not in a normal state of mind, they are actually putting more stress on their calves instead of taking it off.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019m sure Bud irritated a lot of people when, addressing a specific problem, he told them to \u201cWork with your animals and do what they tell you they need.\u00a0 There is no way I can write you a recipe.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0Richard and Tina say \u201cDrive your animals.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0 They are absolutely right, and Bud eventually got around to saying that this is the first step,\u00a0during the conversation.\u00a0\u00a0I prefer to say \u201cTake them for a walk\u201d\u00a0 since to me, this tends to put a person in the right mental attitude to do the animals some good, and this was what Bud would tell me he was going to do when I asked him where he was going.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I don\u2019t think most livestock feel comfortable anywhere in their pastures.\u00a0 There are some places they feel less uncomfortable and that\u2019s where they hang out.\u00a0 On the big set-stocked ranches I mentioned, certain cows could always be found in certain areas.\u00a0 As soon as we started working them better they stopped doing this.\u00a0 When Bud put cattle in the corral, unless you drove them out, they would stay there, with the gates open until thirst or hunger\u00a0caused them to leave.\u00a0 Bud seemed to make them feel that this was the safest, most comfortable place they could be.\u00a0 If you are interested, go to our website\u00a0 www.stockmanship.com<\/a>\u00a0and click on the \u201cHerding\u201d button.\u00a0 Especially read \u201cMy Two Cents Worth\u201d posted July 12, 2009 for several incidents that make me believe this is true.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wrote this in answer to a post on Kit Pharo’s list, but thought it might be of interest to viewers of this site. \u00a0At the risk of being the person with a hammer and looking at every problem as a nail . . . \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 A great many handling and health problems in livestock […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2056","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stockmanship"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2056"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2063,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2056\/revisions\/2063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2056"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2056"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stockmanship.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2056"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}