Reduced Stress Cattle Handling by Horseback

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) December 24, 2011 --

Many reduced stress cattle handling seminars consist of sitting in a classroom for two days listening to lectures and watching videos. Afterwords you go home and try applying what you think you have learned. Some things seem to work while others just don't seem to come together. Much of video these seminars barely touch upon the differences between working cattle on foot or from the back of a horse. When you get home almost nothing seems to work because you are not only trying to see what you learned, you have no idea of the things you needed to learn in order to handle your cattle from the back of a horse.

One difference in working horseback is that you are bigger than the cow which affects the pressure points on the cow's bubble. While we have been taught about the bubble and balance points we have not been taught how to move our horses in ways to take full advantage. Instead we have been taught to keep our horses parallel to the cow and to put pressure on the front of the cow to turn it. When we do this a cow will often speed up and try to go around us. Then we wind up trying to beat the cow to the fence. If it beats us the first time, the second time it will run under our horse's neck and we start getting frustrated. The next thing you know, we have the cow out of the pen, but also have to take time out to repair the fence as the cow missed the gate. This situation is easily avoidable, but it is also one of those things we haven't been taught.

One thing we have not been taught is how to adjust how much pressure we are putting on the bubble by being able to adjust our horse's position laterally. Rather than putting pressure directly on the eye of a cow to get it to turn, if we use lateral motion to change out horse's body position away from the cow to get it to turn. We can also use lateral movement to take pressure off the cow to keep it from wanting to run off while also keeping the cow moving in the direction we want.

There are also different ways we can use our horses to move hundreds of cattle at a time with no help. The methods used in doing this will also establish a strong herd instinct. Rather than scattering across a new pasture when we put them through the gate, the cattle will bunch up on their own and graze together. This makes not only cuts down on labor and lost cattle, but also reduces or eliminates selective grazing in holistic programs.

It make no difference if you are running a few hundred to a few thousand cows on pasture or in a feedlot, you need to handle them with the least amount of stress possible. Used properly, our horses are the best low stress cattle handling tool in our arsenal. Just like any other tool we need to learn to use them properly and keep them sharpened. Otherwise it would be akin to a doctor performing open heart surgery with a dull scalpel and claiming scalpels to be a bad tool because they don't make clean cuts.

To find out more about low stress cattle handling from horseback visit http://www.naturacattlehandling.com

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