John Moore Horse & Cattle Course USA

these cows belong to the Carver Cattle Company here in southwest Colorado they spend the summer months up in the high country so we'll spend summers riding way up high you're checking on cows and doctoring cows and rotating pastures and fixing fences and so on then in the fall we'll spend a few weeks riding big wide circles a country way up high looking for cows and driving them at that point down into the lower pastures where we can get them all in one place we can eventually drive them into a big set of Corral's where they'll be sorted and calves will be sold and shipped and that's a big day and we'll spend weeks getting ready for that day on this outfit we usually trailer out to the country where we'll be hunting for cows and gather them into a big holding pasture we take a small group of students with us on these cow works like this it's part of the extended class I teach here in the US and in these classes I cover all the aspects of the horse but primarily we work on our riding skills we do it in the round pen we do it in the arena in these controlled environments and work on the maneuvers and getting control of the horse but then like everything else you've got to get outside the classroom at some point and go out into the real world and do something with what you've learned right there is right here this is all downhill we're all gonna go awake this downhill and then right here in the flat is a big it's a big field with the cabin right here so that's where we're gonna hold those cows we get out to that big field and you see that cabin thought fishing there's a lot of horses I think these days that get taught all kinds of maneuvers in all kinds of disciplines and it's a little bit like getting all dressed up for the ball and then never going to the ball and this out here I consider like going to the ball going to the dance you're out here and where it all started to be here you're working these cows and at any given point during any day you'll be doing things that in the specialized world of horse shows have turned into events like team sorting team penning and cutting and reining and roping and those are things that people will train horses to be specialists in but out here horse has to do also those things maybe all within an hour and and be fairly good at it or you'll lose control 800 cows Erika's riding her three-year-old horse today that she raised and she's making the kind of horse Saturday because she wants to ride we like to get these young horses out here like this and show them the world nothing beats getting out here and doing something with a horse it's important that we spread out and that everyone knows which piece of country they need to gather so that they ride through they can pick up whatever cows they find and driving into the holding pasture or we'll meet later in the day some people might get the idea that when I say pasture I mean a nice green pasture you might see in a magazine these pastures are a few thousand acres of rough brushy country we have to go hunt for these cows to bring them in you really need to be aware of what's going on around you you have to look for tracks and you have to get an idea where the cows by B and or you'll miss cows and have to do it again we'll come up short now our job is really really important and if you see a cow even thinking to going to the Willows dive in there don't stand there watch her go okay come on Emma let's go we can't let anything get no love you know when you ride with a purpose and you have a job that you need to do then you're riding sort of changes and if the horse doesn't respond straight away I always think that I did something wrong instead of you know asking it again and making it happen but now since I got back from this trip I find myself being more sure that I'm asking it right and demanding more from my horse and it's working quite well when I got home from Colorado and got to ride my own horse I really felt that I had changed as a rider I felt more confident and more assertive and my body language in the saddle was both much much clearer and more assertive than before and writing my own horse not only did I feel more confident and assertive but also I felt that I was able to correct myself in my writing apparently all that writing and moving cows made me a little bit more body aware I think and I hope a bit closer to being somewhat coordinated as a rider I've had some people help and you guys picked it up really quite well I was I was proud of how you spread out all day nobody got caught up with each other everybody kind of moved forward everyone was watching anytime the cows would start to move out you guys were going out doing your job and it's just like I said this morning when I said you guys aren't guests today you're cowboys and you really were Cowboys today I was proud of every one of you I'm serious too and when you have a million and a half dollars worth of beef moving it's stressful for the guy you know the test to watch it all but you guys today really made it a lot better for me so I'm serious I'm not just being nice so thank you really these gals are looking for their babies and the babies they're looking for their mamas they're all coming here going - we're gonna figure out who's who yeah once they suck they'll kind of go okay we're all right let's go guess I'm the drink this is the big day there's about 800 cows and calves and have to be sorted into groups of the ones that will be sold and chip and the ones that will keep the ones that belong to the neighbors that got scooped up and they're gathering and there's the ones that will replace the old cows and are gonna get shipped and so on so it's a pretty intense day we have a lot to do and only a day to get it done each person has a job in the Corral's it's vital to everything running smoothly that everybody kind of know what they're doing and work together we've had a great time with students on these days they got a job to do but they also have someone there helping to figure it out by the end of the day you know you've done something that everybody's got the hang of it and they've been good hands there we go okay do it do it send me some it's going really fast with you know eight or nine hundred discs and we have to do this twice today separate the calves and llamas and the shipping cut yeah well half time good job Eric okay let him in figuring out what yeah there's moments when a guy finds himself standing right in the way you know if you're sitting here and they're trying to get a catsuit you move out of the gate let's capture that's the kind of stuff you're just watching all the time yeah yeah you're doing good you find out you really need your horse to turn around fast and listen to you and go and stop and all that stuff really happy that I go use two cows during this trip and it's because when I introduced my horse to cows for the first time last summer it didn't go very well at all because she she was afraid of him she was really afraid of me and I couldn't really tell her that you weren't dangerous because I wasn't really sure myself that they weren't they looked pretty big to me I haven't been around cows much before and yeah that whole thing didn't go very well but now obviously I feel completely safe around cows now I know how they behave I know much more about him and you know we worked with cows almost every day for two weeks next cow event I'll take my horse too I think I'll be able to calm her down and I think will go a lot better than last time when it's time to move move and get really aggressive about moving these cows getting behind them and kind of begging them to go there usually won't it's important when you riding these young horses in these gathers and in these Corral's like this that you don't forget that they are young and they they don't know a lot they may have a good stop on them and they may be able to turn around and go after a cow and turn a cow but at the same time this is new to them and it's really easy for them to get excited to get scared and get in over their heads and so it's good to take a little breather every now in the end and just kind of go over the basics with him again check your stop check your turns make sure they're listening to you connected to you they ride her a little bit she's excited and then it's kind of fun fair of me to make her do all this stuff perfectly but the more I ride her here the better she's good I enjoy riding the horse like this I like to help him learn to relax and focus on the job he needs to do I'm riding this horse for someone else and he's been ridden by a lot of different riders he's gotten pretty stiff in places but its really soft minded horse and it's really rewarding to feel and start to come around as the day goes on and learn to start to relax and maybe collect himself a little I guess it's sort of on the job training we don't want to ever put someone in a situation where they're in over their head where the jobs too far out of their comfort zone we want people and horses to succeed so it's important that when we have you turn a cow or gather a pasture you are never in a situation where you're asked to do something you can't do at first you might think you can't just like a young Colt who's trying something for the first time you might find the trying it is putting into new territory outside what you're used to but with every little success your confidence builds just like your horses confidence after a while you're doing things you never thought you could do and then it becomes ordinary after you do it for a few days then you can move on to the next higher level then you're becoming a good hand everybody knows the job now it's it's going really smooth yeah don't quit good job good job okay good let's go get him some more that's probably good for now that's probably far enough hammer us our crew this afternoon compared to this morning everybody now knows nobody knew what to do and this morning everybody's kind of got the program and it's going really smooth and it's yeah like you said it's neat when the horses have a job to do they don't spend a lot of time acting stupid in and out of the trailer out on the hills in here nothing beats a job whoo you after the Cavs have been weaned and shipped these cows are pretty anxious to get out of those curls and get back to some good feed and some freedom themselves they're usually pretty hot and ready to run so they'll usually take off as soon as you open the gate it's pretty important not to let them get ahead of you it's important to not let them get spread out where they can get away into the timber so you gotta sometimes hook up and ride pretty hard and keep them lined out and moving straight and you know there's another thing that comes out of these classes that right at first I think is not a parent and a lot of times it's not apparent to people until a few weeks after the class when they get back home and that is these horses teaches something that you don't even know you're being taught they they teach you to have confidence they teach you to try things that you would never try at home you would never have the opportunity to try it at home normally and if you didn't have a bunch of cows back home you wouldn't be bailing off the mountainside it wouldn't be chasing a cow through brush and at a full gallop on a horse and the confidence that people get when they leave here when I see him again in their country they're a little different person they have a little swagger to their walk a little bolder and their horses respond to that confidence that they get here and that leadership that they acquire after we've gone several miles we'll get these cows up to this point and get them bunched up and let them settle a little bit after they've been traveling fast and then kind of wound up and we'll bring them through the gate here at this point and Rick you'll get a count on these cows and kind of get an idea of whether you've lost any along the way so you kind of read your horse forward and kind of narrow the opening and counting as they come through the gate one or two or three at a time after that when they're all through the gate it's just a straight shot back to the big pasture and the end of a long day it's always a great feeling when that last cow goes over the hill back to the pastures where they'll graze until it's time to gather them up again and go into the next phase which is bringing them down about 30 miles through the country and we passed through a couple of towns along the way they have a Main Street bring them back to where they'll spend the winter in a bit lower country you

Channel: John Moore TV

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Id: srVHSLiO5zo

Length: 23min 1sec (1381 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2016