Thoughts on Calf Roping

That's what I was talking about in my first post. It does mimic calf work on a ranch, it's the speed that I can understand adding a aspect that could be seen as cruel. In the rodeos I have gone to both small local ones and PRCA rodeos, I have seen a good number of the calves airborne while they are stopped. I've never seen any injured though.

Weird, I'm never on this side of the Rodeo is Cruel! Argument.

Well, sometimes it can be cruel. Bad things happen. I have seen calves end up with broken necks from horses that stop too hard. They just do what they can to minimize the risk of real injury.

Calf roping isn't for the faint of heart, but how do you think things get done on ranches when there are hundreds, even thousands of claves to tag, immunize, and take care of.
Also, calves are very hardy, and can take a lot more than we think. In fact, I have seen calves do more damage to the horses than the roping does to the calf.

Smrobs that is very true.

Here is calf roping in a ranch setting rather than at a rodeo as a timed event:

The calf struggles and has the potential to injure itself, but taking away speed lowers that risk.

I'm torn. I know how well stock is treated at a rodeo, and I don't think it's cruel so much as a higher risk towards the animal than other events.

Yep, even those folks do it different than we do down here. When we are branding, we focus on roping the calf by the hind legs. Not only does that not choke them, but it is much less of a struggle for the folks on the ground. Like you said, the addition of speed changes a lot of things.

I've never seen any evidence of stock being so well treated in rodeos that everyone says. I've seen it SAID a whole lot but I've never seen anything to back it up other than defensive people.

On the other hand, I've seen calves lifted off the ground by their necks, having horns broken and limping off after a roping.

I understand the need for REAL, functional roping in the setting of a ranch. I do not understand the need to add all that speed and violence for the sake of "sport." I think it's cruel and really sad. :(

I do think its exploitation and cruel. In the REAL world there is a purpose and it's not all about bravado and dominance. It's sad that people pervert that in some rodeo events.

Deerly:

There are bad rodeos and there are bad cowboys in good rodeos (Though these tend to be easy to weed out).
I have only seen one bad rodeo and it was a very small rodeo in a pretty backwoods area where the locals decided to try their hand at being a cowboy.

I have barrel raced and been part of the rodeo circuit through drill team and I can say in my experience, all of the stock has been well treated. The only injuries I have come across have been due to animals inflicting them on other animals.

All of the bucking stock knew their job. They were calm in the pens, went out and did their job, and came back and were calm again. The cowboys, stock companies, and rodeo personnel all made it a priority to put as little stress on the animals as possible.

I'm sorry that the rodeos you have attended have been subpar. If you're ever in my area I would be more than willing to introduce you to the cowboys and cowgirls who work and ride in our rodeos and take you behind the chutes for you to see for yourself.

A lot of people think that bucking horses are only doing it because they are beat and abused or whatever, but I'm glad there are people out there that actually know the truth.

Useless information here, but I own an ex-bronco, he was retrained, and is now is one of the calmest horses we have. Haha. Ironic right?

Tennessee: My instructor has an ex-bronco as well, I ride him on occasions and he's a great horse, he jumps well with me.

And too add- People usually associate the rough em tough em cowboy stuff as cruel cause it seems cruel, but horses buck because they are trained to just like dressage horses jumping horses and any other horses that do that stuff cause they are Trained to the point they know what to do. There's a different technique for for training different things, and none of the techniques are to beat the horse over and over till it bucks and bucks and bucks.