Volume 4, Issue 2 (July 2015)
Over three decades, Bud Williams (with the indispensable aid of his wife, Eunice) taught 146 two- and three-day stockmanship schools that focused on low-stress livestock handling, and about the same number of shorter programs. Bud and Eunice’s daughter, Tina, and son-in-law, Richard McConnell, have attended nine of those schools. Richard and Tina are now conducting their own stockmanship schools which are faithful renditions of Bud’s. So, I am pleased that they consented to be profiled and interviewed, as well as each contribute an article, to this issue.
Kent Reeves of The Whole Picture Consulting, LLC, reports on the first ever symposium, “Stockmanship: Managing Rangelands with Effective Low-Stress Livestock Handling” for the 68th Society for Range Management Annual Meeting held last February in Sacramento.
This issue also includes a lengthy article, Cattle Handling in Early North America: An Historical Analysis, which examines what the historical record has to teach us about that subject, and explores and explodes several common myths in the process.
We also are fortunate to have an article by the wildlife biologist at Theodore Roosevelt National Park, Blake McCann, Ph.D., on his innovative research in applying low-stress livestock handling as a tool for managing the wild horses in the park.
In a complementary piece in the Applied Stockmanship section, I report on my experiences rounding up wild horses in Theodore Roosevelt National Park using the principles and techniques of low-stress livestock handling.
The issue finishes with the Mythbusters, Research Pearls, Instructional Materials Review, and Resources sections.