Bob attended a one day school we gave June 11, 2005 in St. Clair County, Missouri. Here’s what he has to say about how stockmanship is working out for him now!

Had the opportunity two weeks ago to use our new corral with a ‘Bud box’. This is almost embarrassing how good it worked. It took all of about 10 seconds to figure it out. These cows were new from the sale barn, not ‘broke’ to the system. I can load the alley in seconds by moving less than 3 ft.

After we worked them we loaded them thru the same alley to haul them to another farm. My son commented, “we’ll never get’em back thru there.” If anything, they went thru better the second time. All the time we were building it, the boys kept telling me it wouldn’t work and making plans to retro fit it with a gate in the box. I’m sure my oldest son, who helped that day, is really convinced now. Last week we helped a fellow at Osceola lay out and build a corral. As I was laying out and explaining the ‘box’ they, were all looking at me pretty funny (remember, I’m used to this, I started managed grazing in the ’80s). My son enthusiasticly told them how good it worked.

It’s so sad how much money and effort go into facilaties to compensate for inferior stock handling. Not to mention the untold stress on the stock.

Just another little story. Last week I had a bull get on the neighbor’s place. I located him Saturday morning. I went to fetch him back with 2 dogs (Jim and Scot). Basically I let the dogs ‘hold’ him, and I drove the cows away. Then we just walked him 1/4 mile to the gate, which I had to open while he stood there, took him onto the road and walked him 3/4 mile home. The bad part is, nobody was there to see all this good stock handling by both man and dog! Oh yes, all this took about an hour. I’m sure it could have taken longer if I would of had 4 or 5 cowboys with broken fences, injured livestock and not have gotten him.

We had a great opportunity to demonstrate and discuss some low-stress stockmanship on lovely Beefmaster heifers provided by Skelton Farms in Arkansas at the Beefmaster Breeders United convention.

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Richard and I are down in Branson, Missouri enjoying the BBU Convention. We had an exhibit table today to visit with people. Tomorrow morning we will give a short demonstration on Low-Stress Stockmanship and visit with people again at the exhibit. Then, tomorrow night we get a lovely evening on the Showboat Branson Belle! What a life!

I must be a sucker for getting myself into these situations, but in the end I learn a lot from them and get free experience too. A fellow I know had been talking to me for a couple of weeks about needing someone to catch two heifers he had not been able to catch when he ran out of grass and tricked the other ten heifers into the corral. He had tried a couple of times to chum these two with range cubes and had tried with help to no avail to drive them in to the corral. So, I told him I would go up and gather them if he would stay away until I had them caught. He agreed.

I started working with the calves September 28th and spent four and a half hours just getting them to where they would respond to light pressure. I went back on September 29th and worked three and a half hours with them, at which point they were working better and not just running off like deer. I went back on October 1 and spent about five more hours with them and had them to the point they would drive and handle nicely, but still they were not in the corral.

I went back up on October 3rd and found that one of the two heifers had calved, and not wanting to put more stress on the heifer decided I would just drive them up by the corral and string a polywire across the field to cut down on my walking.

Then I just left them for five days until today, October 8th. Tina and I both went up this time and the smaller walking distance really helped out. We opened up a new gate on the north side of the corral and in no time had them caught in a small weaning pen. From there it was easy to bring the two heifers into the corral and close the gate. I called the owner, and he sent the trailer. We backed it up and opened the door, and I got in the corral and pretty much just stood in the side of the corral I didn’t want the heifers. They walked up, looked in the trailer, one jumped in, and within ten seconds the other loaded without any problem at all.

We backed the horse trailer up to the gate on the right in front of the cow.

And they walked right in!

I have heard Bud say over and over “you keep doing the right thing until it works.” This is definitely one of those times where patience and persistence payed big dividends in the end.