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Step 1
Work on a ranch to learn everything you can about cattle. You'll feed the cows, give shots, look for pinkeye, help with calving and much more. Buy a ranch if you can afford it and can handle all kinds of uncertainty, from bad weather to sick cattle to fluctuating markets.
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Step 2
Select promising bulls for breeding and rodeo riding. Castrate the others and raise them for meat or for steer wrestling at the rodeo. Decide whether you'll use the females for birthing or beef.
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Step 3
Learn some rodeo skills at bull-riding or rodeo school, and develop other skills on the ranch. You rope a calf to give it medicine the same way you rope one to bring it down in the rodeo.
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Step 4
Buy cattle feed, or raise your own if your ranch is big enough. If it's really big, grow enough grain to sell to other people. Grassfed cattle require a pasture consisting of high-energy grasses and clovers.
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Step 5
Mend fences and maintain farm buildings and equipment. Learn about machinery--a lot of ranch work, including branding and vaccinating, is now mechanized.
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Step 6
Feed and take care of your horses.
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Step 7
Be a savvy businessperson. You have to buy grain, sell animals and balance the books.
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Step 8
Get someone to watch the ranch while you ride in the rodeo. Many cowboys work their ranches Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and compete Thursday through Sunday. (Some cowboys are only ranchers, some are only in the rodeo and some do both.)
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Step 9
Pay a rodeo entry fee and hope to place high enough to take some prize money home. Top rodeo cowboys earn a good living on the circuit, but many others barely scrape by.
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Step 10
Enjoy being outdoors, working with animals and keeping a quintessential American way of life alive.
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Step 11
Buy an original Stetson at StetsonHat.com.
Comments
baloza said
on 8/30/2009 I am an Italian cowboy from the north. I mend fences and have horses on my small ranch. I also have a stetson hat and many country CD's. I have a big belt buckle and love to watch westerns. I also have gold chains. My girlfriend thinks I am a sexy Italian cowboy. This is cool
jedikat13 said
on 7/10/2009 Actually, this is bullshit: "Also, in a rodeo bull riding, steer roping, bareback bronc riding, and saddle bronc riding are only for the cowboys."
I have done both bull and bareback bronc riding in the rodeo and I am a cowgirl and I love it.
In fact, "And the other events like barrel racing and pole bending are for the cowgirls. Just about every thing else is open to both. In some competitions cowboys may barrel race or pole bend, but in regular rodeo that is a big no no."
I don't have much of an interest in barrel racing or pole bending, who knows, may enjoy it. And I always think "good for them" when I do see a cowboy doin' them!
wilburn1222 said
on 6/10/2008 I am trying to locate Patrick Delano Simpson (IPD) for a reunion. If you can, please pass this on to him and he can email me at wilburn1222@yahoo.com. Thanks
wilburn1222 said
on 6/10/2008 I am trying to locate Patrick Delano Simpson (IPD) for a reunion. If you know him, please pass this on and he can email me at wilburn1222@yahoo.com
wilburn1222 said
on 6/10/2008 I am trying to locate someone for a reunion that may be involved with the rodeo circuit in some way, Patrick Delano Simpson (IPD). Please pass this on to him if you can and he can email me at wilburn1222@yahoo.com. Thanks