Some sports have a lower barrier to entry than others.
A game of soccer, for instance, only requires a ball and some open space. Baseball and basketball need a bit more special equipment. And then there are events like the rodeo, where you need an arena, saddles, halters and, of course, horses.
Good rodeo horses can be hard to find, however, so one of the country’s premier programs has started raising their own at Sul Ross State University in Alpine.
CJ Aragon, rodeo coach at Sul Ross, spoke to the Texas Standard about the school’s breeding project.
This transcript has been edited lightly for clarity:
Texas Standard: Tell us about the types of horses you’re breeding there at Sul Ross.
CJ Aragon: Well, we started a bucking horse breeding program where we can raise our own bucking horses for practice for the students to use, and so they can practice riding horses that buck and like to buck.
Now, it doesn’t seem like it’d be too hard to find maybe a mean horse that needs some training that would buck. But that’s that’s not exactly what you need. You need something that is, what, sort of raised up to know how to buck at the right time – is that right?
Yeah. You know, a lot of these stock contractors have started bucking horse breeding programs: Harry Vold has one, Cervi has one, Pete Carr here in Texas has one, Rafter G. What they do is if you have a stud that bucks and a mare that bucks, you breed them together and you get a colt that really likes to buck and and is really good at his job.
It’s no different than racehorses. If you have a fast horse, you breed it to another fast horse, and with any luck, you get a horse that’s even faster. And we’ve just started breeding horses that they’re really good at their job – their job just happens to be bucking.
So these are horses that otherwise, you know, will let you rub them on the nose, and they’ll take a carrot or whatever – but when they get into the bucking arena, they know it’s time to do their job?
Yeah. I can walk out into the into the pen with them or out into the pasture with them, and I can walk up to them. You know, most of them have names. We rub on them; we scratch on them. They get treats from us.
You run them in the bucking chutes, they’re going to buck these kids off or do their dang just to try to buck them off. And as soon as they’re out of the bucking chutes, they’re back to being their friendly selves again. They’re just good at their jobs.
You mentioned that there are other breeding programs, even many around here in Texas. But is this unique for a college rodeo program that you’re aware of?
There’s only one other program in the nation I know that’s doing this, and it’s not necessarily the program that does it; it’s the coach that does it there. But, you know, we have a bunch of mares now and, and we’ve tapped into these other breeding programs.
We’ve got some of our mares from Cervi Rodeo; they put on the San Antonio Rodeo. They put on the Houston Rodeo. We’ve got some from Rafter G over around Mesquite. We’ve got some from Harry Vold.
And then this year we leased a stud from Rocky Mountain Rodeo Company to breed to our mares. So, you know, we’re tapping into a lot of different resources to get our program going.
Now, are these horses potentially a source of revenue for the rodeo team, or do you plan to keep them all?
Well, hopefully it could eventually turn into a source of revenue. You know, the bucking horse world, there’s bucking horses that sell for $30,000 and $40,000 at some of these bigger sales.
And ideally, if we have a horse that’s that good, they’re probably not going to do us much good in practice. If they buck that hard, they need to be going to a rodeo. They need to be doing that for a living.
So if we get some of those horses that are at that level, what our plans are is to sell them and use that for scholarship money or to continue to build on the program.
Are there other benefits for your students as well, just to sort of be around a breeding program like this? It seems like other potential sort of career training that they might use down the line.
Well, absolutely. The kids go out there and they handle the horses every day. They work with them. Like I said, the horses are gentle. So the kids get to see firsthand what goes on behind the scenes at rodeos.
You know, like a lot of kids just show up to the rodeos, and it’s just contestants. Our kids get to do the ground up – we started working with these colts when they were six months old. And by the time we start bucking them, they’ll be three and four years old. So it’s a several-year process. But these kids get to be involved in that process from the ground up.
So if they want to eventually raise colts, if they want to eventually be a stock contractor, they’re getting hands-on experience. And we have the ranch out there. They go out and help build fences. They help fix the water. They go out there and do basically the daily ranch duties as well with these horses.
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