Reading Cattle 101 How does one go about reading cattle and why is it even important? Boyd Rice and T.J. Roberts share their cow work and cutting tips. From The American Quarter Horse Journal
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oyd Rice, professional cutting and reined cow horse trainer, and T.J. Roberts, manager of AQHA Best Remuda Award winner Tongue River Ranch, share their secrets for reading a cow’s behavior.
What is Reading a Cow? In the most general sense, reading a cow is watching the cow’s movements and body language, and being able to anticipate what she will do next. Ranchers rely on their ability to read cattle day in and day out. Many a horse competition celebrates that ranching spirit with classes like cutting, reined cow horse and working ranch horse, and many a time it’s the rider’s ability to read cattle that gives his or her horse an advantage in competition. Why is the ability to read cattle an advantage? Because being able to anticipate the cow’s movements can make a huge differ-
ence in the success of a run. T.J. Roberts, manager of 2011 AQHA Best Remuda Award winner Tongue River Ranch, explains why reading a cow is important. “If you can read a cow, you can set your horse up in a good position to work her,” T.J. says. What happens when you misread a cow? Take this example: 1. A cow is preparing to stop, but you don’t read that it’s preparing to stop. 2. So you kick your horse to speed up. 3. This puts your horse out of position to stop and turn with the cow. Obviously, misreading a cow happens to everyone. But consistently misreading cattle can cause a horse to be too short or too long on cattle and make for bad perfor-
mances. Multimillion dollar earner in National Cutting Horse and National Reined Cow Horse association competition Boyd Rice says: Reading a cow simply means having an idea of what the cow is fixin’ to do. The best way to be good at reading cattle is to be around them. However, even if you haven’t spent a lifetime training cutting horses or weren’t raised sorting cattle on a ranch, watching cattle and practicing reading them can really help improve your cattle runs. As you’re practicing, whether it’s actually working cattle, or just watching cow horse or cutting runs, keep these tips in mind.
Type can be an indicator of how the cow will handle Some breeds of cattle are wilder than others. Oftentimes, cattle with “more ear” or those with Bos Indicus or Brahman influence will run harder and be more sensitive to pressure. Comparatively, white-face cattle or those with a lot of Hereford influence are typically quieter and less sensitive to pressure.
Watch how they come in the gate.
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AUGUST 2022
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