Rodeo Team Roping Equipment

Video Transcript

"This is Randall Powell and I am here for Expert Village and in this clip, I am going to talk about the equipment needed for team roping. You need a team roping saddle which is going to be the most important. You want to find one that has a seat big enough for you. If you are a bigger guy, you are going to need a 16 inch seat. If you are smaller, you are going to need a smaller seat. A lot of the heelers prefer a smaller seat so that they can stay in tight as much as they move around on the horse. You need a rope and saddle with a really thick horn and you are going to get this rubber. It's called dally wraps and you can take an old inner tube and cut it up into pieces or you can buy rubber at your local feed stores or through your roping magazines or whatever you like. Just wrap the rubber around the horn until it is about this thick and that will keep the rope from burning the leather on your saddle horn and if you don't use rubber, it will eventually break your saddle horn off. So you need to put the rubber on your saddle horn and rope is also a good thing to have when team roping. You need to select a good rope for yourself. You know if you are ahead and need a softer rope and shorter rope and if you are a heeler, you need one with a little more stiffness and longer rope. The head ropes are 30 foot and the heeler are 35. Then you can also use baby powder. When the ropes are new, you can stretch them and get all the wax off of them and then put baby powder on the ropes and it will help you to keep the ropes have more action longer. You need a roping glove which is a cotton glove you put over your hand. This kind of prevents you from burning your fingers or your hand with the rope if you ever get into any kind of bind and the rope is feeding through your hand and you are trying to get a dally or something, that glove will keep you from getting burns on your hands from the rope. So the glove is also very important. A lot of the team ropers use a breast collar especially if you are a header. I don't' have one on this horse but it connects right here at this d-ring and goes around in front of his chest and connect on the other side on the other d-ring. It has a snap that will snap down here at this ring from the bottom of your horse's cinch. There also needs to be a tie down. A tie down is basically a nose band with a leather strap connected to it that will also clip to the bottom of your cinch here. That will keep the horse's head down and keep him looking at the cattle. The bridle of course you are going to need that riding anything and you need roping reigns which would be just one reign that connects to both sides of the bit. Don't need split reigns like I've got on this horse but just a set of roping reigns. If you drop them or something like that, you are not going to loose them going down the pen and you just use whatever bit your horse is comfortable with. That is some of the equipment you need to do team roping. "