Pate Says Consumers Should Be Top Of Mind When Working Cattle

Curt Pate is one of the leading cattle handling trainers in North America. He hails from Wyoming. In April, he was in Oklahoma training some folks both young and old on effective stockmanship. In this best of edition of the Beef Buzz, Pate said producers need to make sure what they are doing is also acceptable to the consumer.

"We are in the age of ….people really think about what they eat and if we can’t look ‘em in the eye and tell ‘em that we are giving them what they require and what they want, I don’t believe it’s going to work, they are going to go other places to find something to eat," Pate said. "So, as a beef producer, I want to be able to go to church or to a football game and I want to be able to look my friends in the eye and shake their hands and say I’m doing everything I can to ensure these animals are raised in a way that you think is all right."

The term “properly treated” is very subjective. That’s a challenge as often today’s consumer will look at cattle or livestock like how they look at their dog or cat, so a lot of their expectations doesn’t match the reality of raising livestock.

"If you’re a livestock man or women, that’s grown up around livestock, some of the things that works for a spoiled dog are not the proper things to do for an animal that has been raised outside all its life," Pate said. "So, we’ve got to communicate to these folks, that we are doing the right thing and we’ve got to show them some things that we can do to make life better."

This involves teaching cattle the right expectations. Pate said that may or may not include the idea of low stress cattle handling. That’s a term that both producers and consumers can find common ground on. Pate said the concept only works when individuals have the skills to back up low stress handling. He said it’s more important to have effective stockmanship, as he has found sometimes slowing down can create more stress on cattle if it takes more attempts to load cattle into a trailer for example. With a little more pressure, he said this is more effective in creating animal that loaded onto the trailer calm and quiet the first time.