Livestock -- bucking bulls and horses, roping cattle, and the saddle horses -- is the stock contractor's most valued assets and acquiring good bucking stock and roping cattle is a year-round job for the average contractor. He (or she) attends three, four or more bucking stock auctions per year. And it's not your regular livestock auction.
For instance way back when at the 1994 National Finals Rodeo bucking stock sale, John Growney paid $13,500 for a 4-year-old bucking mare named Baldy. Another contractor from the B Bar J Rodeo Company of Cleburne, Texas, paid $12,000 for a 9-year-old bay gelding. The top bull at the annual sale went for $6,700. That same year good bucking horses range in cost from $3,000 to $10,000 and rodeo bulls from $10,000 to $20,000. According to one contractor, to purchase a complete string of quality bucking stock could cost as much as $1 million! That is some expensive steak.
So why don't stock contractors buy animals from ranchers or farmers? Well, they did up until the 1940s when feral horses (domesticated animals released to the wild) would run the range and cowboys would ride them. At that time, the supply of bucking stock was so great that stock contractors never gave it a thought.
Until the 1950s, when bucking horses suddenly were in short supply. Ranchers began to fence off more and more pastureland, shooting those same wild horses they considered a nuisance and that rodeo cowboys itched to get on. At the same time, rodeo was getting more popular, and the demand was even higher. Trucks and tractors replaced working livestock, and unfortunately, the post-World War II horse meat market opened up. Instead of sending those renegade horses to the rodeos, these animals were sent to packing plants and canneries to feed the war zones of Europe.
Horsemen began to grasp the idea that orneriness in a bucking horse is passed on from generation to generation, not unlike the desire to run is passed through the great thoroughbred racing horses to their offspring. This knowledge was used to breed gentler dispositions, not bucking stock. At first, this depletion of the wild horse stock adversely affected the supply of bucking stock.
