From training to retirement, the bucking bulls of PBR live like star athletes

Friday night at PBR's Stampede Days, more than 50 bulls were on-site at Bridgestone Arena. If that seems like a lot of animals, that's because it is — but for good reason. No bull gets ridden more than once per night, meaning each animal works a maximum of eight seconds on any given day. That’s good work if you can get it.

It’s an incredible operation to load them in and out each evening. And while the riders may get most of the spotlight, these bulls are athletes, too.

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"These bulls have to be physically in shape to buck with so much intensity," explained Dr. Douglas G. Corey, chair of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s Animal Welfare Committee. "These bulls go from standing in a chute to immediately firing their hind legs and spinning, twisting, and bucking, and they maintain it until the rider’s off their back. That, to me, is real athleticism."

And just like any athlete, proper training is crucial.

Lucas Manning, a stock contractor from Myakka City, Fla., knows exactly what it takes to get a bull to the big stage.

"A lot of the training gets done on calves with the box dummy, you know, and then they kind of learn a routine with that," Manning told OutKick on Friday. "And then when we start putting riders on them, it’ll take them [not] very long to adjust. And then the better ones, they come here, and we just keep rolling with them."

Diet matters, too, but it varies from ranch to ranch. 

"Mine’s nothing too crazy. I just feed them really good, try to get them all they want to eat. And they’re out on grass, too, where I’m at," Manning said. "Some people do it a little different. Some people, they're on dirt rocks, so they feed them hay and grain. But mine, they get a lot of grass and grain. So I just try to give them as much as I can, where they get big and stout, and it works good for me."

While Manning takes special care of all his bulls, he's had more than a few favorites over the years. Buffalo Heifer, he said, was pretty special. He also loved Kickin' Chicken and Satan's seed.

As for how he comes up with these names?

"Oh, shoot, I don’t know. We're just brainstorming," Manning said. "You hear cool stuff, you watch a movie or a song, you hear something cool, and you just, I write it down in my notes, and when I find a bull that fits it, then I use it."

Dr. Corey put it bluntly: "A 1,200- to 2,000-pound bull that can buck 4 feet in the air, turn back and make six or eight rotations in an 8-second period is an athlete."

And as is the case with elite athletes, the red carpet gets rolled out for them.

PBR is quick to remind fans that safety and welfare are top priorities, and it’s worth noting just how well these animals are treated. Bulls live on sprawling ranches, travel in comfort and retire to easy lives on the farm — often as breeding animals, sometimes as family pets.

"If one of my bulls makes it to the PBR, then he’s earned the right to live on my ranch as a breeding bull," the late bucking bull breeder Kaycee Simpson once said. "And when he dies, we give him a headstone."

As fellow stock contractor J.W. Hart put it, "Probably 95% of the bulls that get retired, they go into, I guess, the retirement program… and if we like their breeding and their pedigrees well enough, we’ll start breeding to them." That's when they get to "live the simple life with the ladies."

gain — good work if you can get it.

Injuries, meanwhile, are rare. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, a bucking bull has just a 0.004 percent chance of sustaining a life-threatening injury at a PBR event. And any bull that does get injured receives top-notch veterinary care.

"My son plays football, and I will say this," stock contractor Matt Scharping said. "Bulls get hurt way less than football players do."

At the end of the day, bull riding takes two athletes: one on top, and one doing the bucking. And PBR doesn't exist without both doing their jobs.

After watching his bulls perform in Nashville on Friday night, Manning was pleased with what he saw from his bovine athletes.

"We did pretty good," he said. "I’m proud of all of them."

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