Longevity of Feed Yard Horses

By: Ted Howard, Production Animal Consultation

We have all seen the video of the famous barrel horse, Scamper, winning a round at the 1985 NFR, BRIDLENESS. He and his owner, Charmayne James went on to win 10 consecutive WPRA World Championships from 19841993. However, much like Paul Harvey’s “The Rest of the Story”, Scamper’s beginning was another story.

“... (Scamper) he went through horse auctions in La Junta, Colo., Guymon, Okla., Clovis and finally Clayton, N.M., ending up at our feedlot, where one of the cowboys, Ron Holland, put the handle on him. Ron Holland was slow and patient with him. He took his time with Scamper and got along with him fine, but he never fought him. ” (Charmayne James, www.barrelhorsenews.com).

Some of the best horses going down the road received their fundamentals in feed yards. There is a great opportunity to make some outstanding horses by understanding better horsemanship. We need to identify with how the horse operates and thinks. To achieve the goal of creating an outstanding horse, we have to start with good horses, no outlaws or broncs.

Scamper’s story doesn’t end with his rodeo career. This great horse lived to be 35 years old (1977-2012). There are many reasons for a horse’s longevity: genetics, workload and lifelong care. Preserving the longevity of our horse is essential in the feed yard industry.

Sources of disease and injury for a horse are numerous in the feed yard environment. For this article we are going to focus on ground conditions and lameness. Lameness is one of the most common ailments and eventually one of the reasons horses don’t last in the feed yard. Ringbone, sidebone, navicular, bowed tendon and joint arthritis can all be found in horses that are used hard.

We as horsemen and women need to learn ways to help keep our horses sound and lasting longer. Stopping fast and turning on hard ground increase the chance your horse will battle lameness. We need to eliminate outrunning cattle down alleyways or needlessly turning our horses around on hard ground.

To be a good stockmen, as well as horsemen, we need to read cattle early enough to prevent from having to ask our horses to get out of a trot. When our horses are running and spinning quickly they create a very disturbing situation for our cattle. Our cattle read off of our horse’s energy as much as our horse reads off of our energy.

Preserving the longevity of our feed yard horses is also good economics. The price of sound feed yard suitable horses is going up every day. Using proper horsemanship is a good opportunity to help save the feed yard money in horse replacement costs. Proper horsemanship is also essential for the pen rider to ride their personal horses into outstanding horses for a larger profit. You never know when you might be riding the next Scamper.