Besides extensive breeding or Born to Buck programs, larger scale contractors may purchase, for instance, sixty new bulls in early winter from different places. These "green" bulls are tried out at colleges or to be used in military or police rodeos. Those bulls that show promise or potential are kept and rotated into the main herd.
Contractors with two more strings of roughstock animals weigh several factors in deciding which string to take to a particular rodeo: where the stock will be penned at the rodeo grounds; length of the rodeo; and skill level of the contestants. The latter the most important.
Training programs for beginners, junior and high school rodeos will get the bloopers, the easier stock in the herd, such as a bull that only lopes down the arena. Competitions with college-level rodeos, military and police rodeos, International Rodeo Association events, and smaller, lower-paying PRCA-sanctioned rodeos will likely ride a contractor's average stock. These animals are consistent but not spectacular--a cowboy can make their ride and maybe place. The third level is the rank stock. These animals are tough and unpredictable in their movement across the arena and the hardest of all to ride. These animals give the cowboys the higher scores, the more exciting and flash ride and are the animals taken to the top-paying PRCA rodeos.
A rodeo contractor's string tires when transported too often from rodeo to rodeo, so a contractor who provides bucking stock for several different rodeos -- sometimes three or four per weekend -- hold back their top stock sending out their third string (younger horses and bulls) to the lesser paying rodeos. Bucking off a cowboy pumps up the green stock's confidence level, and over time these animals will be moved on up to better strings. (Not unlike the way professional sports works.)
But before a contractor's roughstock can even make it to the "Big One," the Nationals Final Rodeo, their stock must be used in rodeos at least eight times during the course of the year. This enables the top cowboys that select bucking stock for the National Finals Rodeo to evaluate the animals.
The better the animal, the more often it is hauled to rodeos. Meanwhile back at the ranch, the roughstock are placed in open fields. They need to be out where they do not see human life. The more contact they have with humans, the more spoiled they become and the less likely they will behave "rank" around the cowboys.
