An often-overlooked position at the feedlot are pen riders, though they are essential to any successful feeding operation. Pen riders wear many hats and day-to-day can vary, but their main focus is animal health.
A typical day begins around 6:30 a.m. when they saddle horses and start riding through pens. The first thing Bruce Miller, head cowboy at Sellers Feedlot in Lyons, Kan., looks at is their water.
“That’s the first thing I do is ride in and make sure they got water,” Miller says. “Then I start getting the cattle up and moving. You get the cattle up whenever you ride a pen to get them moving around, get their belly working, the rumen working. I look for cripples; anything crippled that you can do something about.”
Miller adds that while he is riding one pen, he’s also looking across to the next pen and observing the animals’ behavior before he arrives.
“I’m always looking over to the next pen because cattle are a prey animal and we’re a predator, so you ride into that pen and they might be trying to hide from you,” he says. “I also look at their manure, and then if I see something that doesn’t look quite right, I’ll tell the manager, and he’ll tell the feed crew.”
Pen riders are considered the front line of animal health procedures at a feedlot because they see the cattle every day and are responsible for visually inspecting them for problems.
“Without pen riders our death loss and drop-out rate would be extremely high,” says Ryan Moorhouse, Hartley Feeders general manager, a Five Rivers Cattle Feeding operation in Hartley, Texas. “We’ve talked for years about ways to eliminate the need for pen riders but to my knowledge, the industry hasn’t come up with a good answer. Their skill set is so needed and important in our facilities, it makes the position extremely hard to replace.”
The Math of Management: Ratios and Risk
Hartley Feeders is a 74,000-head feedyard, and Moorhouse notes that as a general rule, one pen rider should ride 10,000 head or less each day in a larger commercial feedyard to remain effective.
Family-owned and operated Sellers Feedlot is a custom-feeding operation with facilities for 12,000 head. They have four cowboys right now, and each has three horses.
“We’re horseback every day, we work six days a week, you get a day off, but then there’s always two cowboys riding pens,” Miller adds.
Ben Fort, Dean Cluck Feedyards director of field operations in Amarillo, Texas, says the pen-rider-to-cattle ratio depends on the risk of your cattle.
“Lighter-weight cattle are higher risk,” he says. “It’d be just like in a classroom setting. You have teacher-child ratios, and they’re quite different for age of kids. It’s a great rule of thumb to think about the conditions and type of cattle you’re feeding.”
Every operation is different, and at Sellers the pen riders keep three horses each. The feedyard pays for farrier services, feed and general health protocols like worming and vaccinations. Any major medical issue with a horse is the responsibility of the cowboy.
“There’s a lot of variation from yard to yard and company to company, but they traditionally provide their own equipment: their horses, saddle and tack,” Fort says.
Pen riders are responsible for managing hospital’s capacity, moving treated cattle home and bringing in retreats. Timely evaluation of cattle is a priority, but they are also doing headcounts, shipping counts and inventory counts.
Stockmanship Over Noise: The Art of Pressure and Release
While cattle handling is typically portrayed as loud and chaotic in the movies, Miller says general stockmanship skills play a huge role in handling, doctoring and moving cattle. “We don’t yell, we don’t whistle. It’s all pressure,” Miller says. “You just put pressure on the cattle to get them out of the pen. We walk the cattle, especially when you’re shipping fat cattle. Nowadays, they weigh 1,500 lb. and have been out of that pen maybe twice since they’ve been there. So walking them up to the scale is very important. Even your sick cattle, you don’t run them down to the hospital, we walk them. We don’t want to be overaggressive with the cattle.”
With cattle well-being top of mind, the efficiency of a feedyard’s operations relies on the pen riders’ ability to move cattle.
“Movements to processing, receiving, reimplants, shipping, just movements that make sense and are efficient are a big thing,” Fort says. “They understand flight zones and pressure points, predictability, they can measure cattle’s reactions.”
The Athlete of the Feedlot: The Specialized Pen-Riding Horse
In addition to understanding cattle behavior, having horsemanship skills and a good horse are equally important.
“A pen-riding horse is a little different than at the ranch. If it’s muddy, there might be holes at the gate and they have to slide down into the hole so you can get that gate open,” Miller says. “When it’s muddy, it’s slick and they have to have really sure footing. Same way in the winter, frozen pens get chopped up pretty good. It’s like walking on rock for them.”
Miller says they don’t do a lot of roping like you would on a ranch, but they do pack a rope in case an animal gets stuck on their back in a hole and they need to roll them back over.
“Cattle react different when you’re on foot, they’re a little more flighty,” Miller continues. “You can walk in there on a horse, they’re not running from you and so it’s easier to pick out a sick animal when you’re horseback. Plus you’re up higher to see over stuff too.”
Moorhouse adds that handling cattle with horses is safer for both the cattle and pen rider.
“Horses are necessary for safe, effective and efficient cattle handling and taking care of our horses’ health is one of our top priorities,” he summarizes. “They work as hard or harder than the people do. Pen riders stay horseback most of the day.”
