In the PowerPoint presentation it all looks so orderly, as the healthy steer standing in the hydraulic chute smiles at the camera while the hired hand in a clean shirt demonstrates a procedure with music playing in the background. I will remind you, there are still places where a cowboy and a horse are an essential part of management. For example, feeder cattle on wheat grass or ranches where they still calve ‘outside’ or summer mountain pastures. These are examples where it is more expedient to treat the critter where you find it, rather than try and drive or haul them to a squeeze chute or trap two miles away.
If you have the luxury of a two-man crew, the method is obvious; head and heel them. But for the lone rider, his skills must be at a higher level. The beast; a cow with a wire around her foot or a steer with pink eye must be 1) caught 2) restrained 3) treated 4) released.
Depending on 1) the terrain, 2) the disposition of critter, and 3) its size, the job can be 1) hard or 2) harder! In real life, catching can mean the head, the horns, the heels, one hock, or the head and front leg together. Restraining the animal usually means putting them on the ground.
Since this lecture could take ten more pages, illustrated, I will discuss the case of a 300 lb bull calf that needs doctored or branded and cut.
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Oh yes, Baxter Black, innocuous, verbose and seedy. You may not know, and may not care, that this strange looking mustached spouter of "poetry" is a founding member of the United Horseman group, clamoring for the opening of slaugherhouses for horses on American soil. What a sneaky little guy huh? Here he is romanticizing the horse - cowboy cant be a cowboy without his hoss. What does the cowboy do when the hoss can no longer carry him or the hoss gets hurt - well Baxter, good old boy that he is, says - sling 'im up, gut 'im and EAT 'im! Not very American.
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