By Nancy S. Loving, DVM and first published on the excellent website The Horse.Com
No matter the discipline, a competitor’s success
No matter the discipline, a competitor’s success
Cowboys Association (PRCA) guidelines for horse care or face penalties and fines. This goes for the saddle horses used for timed events or as pickup horses (used to assist the bronc- and bull-riding cowboys), as well as for the broncs.
All PRCA-sanctioned rodeos are required to have a licensed veterinarian present during performances. Veterinarians and staff are trained and prepared to offer immediate assistance and medical care to any injured horse.
In this article we’ll learn more about these athletes, the types of injuries to which they are prone, and how veterinarians nurse them back to health and glory.
Bucking Horses
You might think bucking horse are ill-behaved grade animals, but they’re far from it. Rather, they’re intentionally bred for their inclination to buck and are considerably valuable, often insured for five to six figures. Owners endeavor to keep them sound just as they do performance horses.
Ben Espy, DVM, Dipl. ACT, an equine practitioner based in San Antonio, Texas, and a consultant on the PRCA’s Animal Care and Welfare Committee, provides insight into these horses’ lifestyles. His equine practice focus is professional rodeo horses, and he has headed the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo’s veterinary services for the past 20 years.
When bucking prospects are born, says Espy, they live wild lives without human contact other than for preventive care. “They are left to their own devices until they are gathered at 4 to 5 years of age,” he says. “Then bucking horses are tested for their propensity to buck using mannequins or willing cowboys.”
If the horse bucks, he is separated into a bucking group; if not, he is pointed toward being a pickup mount or another working horse.
Espy stresses that the sheepskin-lined flank strap does not stimulate a horse to buck; that characteristic is innate and bred into the horses. “There is an art to placing and tightening a flank strap,” he says. “If too tight, it will actually restrain a horse from bucking. The horse that bucks will do so because it is in its nature; the flank strap simply ensures this tendency once the bucking starts. Many people will notice that during the time the horse is in an arena, the bucking horse continues to buck even after the flank strap is removed.”
Bucking horses might participate in rodeos 10 months out of a year, but they are only allowed to buck twice every seven days. Their “work” lasts around eight seconds, or 16 seconds a week.
The San Antonio Rodeo, for example, features the top 50 competitors in the world and draws both the best cowboys and the best stock. Of the 8,000 to 10,000 times an animal (including cattle) enters the rodeo arena during the 21-day event, Espy says he sees, at most, one to three injuries.
When 1,200 or more pounds of sheer muscle erupts from a standstill and gyrates its body in every direction beneath a rider’s weight, it seems as if problems would arise. But Espy says injuries to bucking horses are few and far between. He says he has probably witnessed 12,000 bucking horses perform over the last 20 years, and he’s never seen a scar from spurring on the neck or thorax (chest area) or a lameness that wasn’t incurred due to environmental reasons, such as a laceration or a foot abscess.
He says 90% of lameness issues common to all horses, not just bucking horses, stem from foot problems. Because bucking horses cannot be handled for the farrier, they’re housed on terrain that keeps their hooves trimmed naturally. Veterinarians run them through specialized chutes for immunizations, deworming, and blood draws for Coggins tests and blood work. “The horses are even ultrasounded for reproductive purposes in the same restraint,” says Espy.
The bucking horses travel hundreds of thousands of miles a year. “The horses become accustomed to the travel and the commotion and their job—it becomes their lifestyle,” says Doug Corey, DVM, Oregon-based past president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners. Corey was instrumental in crafting the Pro Rodeo Animal Welfare Guidelines, and he’s served on the PRCA welfare committee.
The primary travel-related ailments Espy says he sees in these horses are strangles (from Streptococcus equi infections), influenza, and rhinopneumonitis. They are more difficult to immunize because of the need for restraint and the physical safety of the human handlers.
Due to their rigorous travel schedule, Corey says bucking horses are continually exposed to respiratory bugs to which they build immunity, so he rarely sees shipping fever. In his experience, respiratory problems in bucking horses tend to be more commonly related to dust and dirt irritation. With that in mind, most rodeos keep their arenas well-watered, he says.
Rodeos are also making a big push to educate all their participants about biosecurity. “No longer do the horses drink from a common water tank but, rather, they are offered water in water buckets originating from their home,” says Corey. This helps minimize infectious disease spread.
The rare injury or infirmity might be associated with rapid heart rates produced when horses burst from the gate and buck intensely, says Espy. The horses don’t get any warmup—they are moved from the collective holding pen to the chute, buck for eight seconds, and then return to the holding pen.
Occasionally, a bucking horse might experience pulmonary hypertension (abnormally high blood pressure in the lungs) and develop epistaxis (a bloody nose), a condition commonly seen in racehorses. Espy has seen the odd rupture of the heart’s chordae tendineae (tendinous chords), resulting in cardiac failure, and a rare fracture. But in 20 years, he says he has only tended to three pulmonary/cardiac events.
Very rarely, says Corey, a horse might sustain a fracture or run into a fence during a ride. “But,” he says, “Most of the injuries amount to nothing more than pulled muscles or a bronc being muscle-sore from travel.”
If an injury does occur, our sources say veterinarians treat these valuable bucking horses just as they would any other performance horse. They administer sedatives, painkillers, and general anesthetic in a padded stall, if necessary, and perform diagnostic and imaging techniques as needed. “All PRCA rodeos have conveyances to move injured animals,” Corey notes.
Meanwhile, professional judges walk through the pens daily and, if they note an obvious problem with any of the horses, they alert the stock contractor who supplies that rodeo venue. Contractors depend on these horses for their livelihood, so their health is of the utmost importance.
“If the horses aren’t healthy, they won’t perform well or consistently, and this reflects poorly on the stock contractor,” says Corey. “So, the contractors are motivated to provide healthy horses that feel good.”
Western Performance Horses
These timed-event horses participate in barrel racing, team roping, tie-down roping, and steer wrestling. Most are trained for a specific event and rarely cross over between events, says Corey.
Just as with most other equestrian disciplines, Espy says 60% of his work on these horses is standard sports medicine care, ranging from joint injections (primarily hock but also fetlock, stifle, and coffin joints) and shock wave therapy to regenerative approaches such as stem cells and platelet-rich plasma. Similarly, he says he uses hoof testers, flexion testing, radiographs, ultrasound—particularly of the suspensory ligaments and flexor tendons—and even MRI as diagnostic tools to evaluate lameness in these horses.
Espy says he mostly sees hind-end issues attributable to the nature of these horses’ work: sudden acceleration, sliding stops, turns, and pivots. He says he rarely sees carpal (knee) problems. However, foot issues, such as coffin joint arthritis and/or podotrochlear disease of the navicular apparatus, are not unusual, particularly due to genetic propensities in certain lines of horses used in these sports.
“Injuries in timed-event horses that are caused by the actual rodeo activity tend to be localized to hocks or stifles,” he adds.
Corey says he sees some muscle soreness, depending on how frequently the horse performs. “If soreness develops, the horse gets rested,” he says. “Most contestants have more than one horse to ride, so they can rest their mounts in between.”
As for back soreness, he says, “Most horses are conditioned for their event, so their backs are conditioned to the work. A rider’s technique is quite important to minimizing soreness or injury.”
At the largest events the timed-event rodeo horses run three times and, then, if they qualify, participate in a final event. Rodeos have two segments: the “perf,” which refers to the performance rodeo in front of an audience, and the “slack,” which refers to the events completed without an audience to accommodate overflow entrants. The slack cowboys must qualfy for the perf. At smaller rodeos, the horses might compete once without a semifinal or final format.
In all PRCA-sanctioned events, a licensed veterinarian is present on rodeo grounds. The vet does not inspect contestants’ horses prior to an event; rather, the riders self-monitor, says Corey. If a horse is sore, it doesn’t compete.
“The sheer numbers of contestants at a top rodeo precludes inspection,” he says. “Not only that but also many times the riders show up right near the event time.”
Just like broncs, the timed event horses travel far and wide. “For example,” says Espy, “in order for a barrel horse to earn $100,000 to $130,000 a year and to qualify as one of the Top 15 that makes it to the big PRCA event in Las Vegas (the Wrangler National Finals Rodeo), these horses travel 120,000 to 150,000 miles a year.” Unlike the bucking horses, however, the timed-event horses warm up for 30 to 90 minutes, depending on their discipline.
What About Local Events?
Along with the 600 to 700 Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association (PRCA) Pro Rodeos that take place each year in the United States are non-PRCA-sanctioned rodeos starting with Little Britches, followed by high school, college, and amateur or county fair venues. Team roping tends to be the most common event. While these local and regional rodeos don’t have as many rules and guidelines as the PRCA-sanctioned events, they usually still follow PRCA rules, says Doug Corey, DVM, Oregon-based past president of the American Association of Equine Practitioners.
Many of the PRCA rodeo stock contractors provide stock for non-PRCA events, too. A veterinarian isn’t required to be on site at these venues but gets called in for emergencies.
Pickup Horses
Pickup horses often work even harder than the timed-event horses. If you’ve watched a rodeo, you’ll see two pickup horses for each bucking contestant—the pickup riders protect the cowboy and release the bucking strap when the animal finishes its eight-second run. The pickup horse has to sprint as well as change direction frequently to keep up with the bronc’s twists and turns.
Espy says most performances use up to 15 bareback broncs and 15 saddle broncs. During each round of 15, a pickup rider has to change horses twice because the animals get winded as they move in conjunction with the bucking horses. This means that, like a polo string, each pickup rider needs five or six horses to work a top-tier rodeo performance.
“More horses are needed for a large arena because the horses tire out more quickly having to traverse longer distances,” adds Corey.
Stock contractors provide most pickup horses as part of their agreement with the rodeo for animal provision. Many are “failed” bucking horses and are quite robust. Most issues Espy says he sees in pickup horses relate to soft tissue, such as tendon and ligament injuries. He doesn’t see work-related joint injuries, and in 20 years has never injected a pickup horse’s joint, including those working well into their mid-teens
Take-Home Message
According to PRCA surveys of on-site rodeo veterinarians gathered from 2004 to 2010, livestock injuries (including cattle) occur at an average rate of 0.05% per year (think one for every 2,000 horses).
Illness and injury are rare among rodeo broncs. Western performance horses and pickup horses are more likely to experience injuries similar to those seen in any other
Nancy S. Loving, DVM, owns Loving Equine Clinic in Boulder, Colorado, and has a special interest in managing the care of sport horses. Her book, All Horse Systems Go, is a comprehensive veterinary care and conditioning resource in full color that covers all facets of horse care. She has also authored the books Go the Distance as a resource for endurance horse owners, Conformation and Performance, and First Aid for Horse and Rider in addition to many veterinary articles for both horse owner and professional audiences.