Day worker Eddie Thompson describes the tasks his string of ranch horses handles.
On a sweat-dripping summer morning, Eddie Thompson is sorting calves from cows in a set of pipe corrals just west of Fort Worth, Texas. He and his buckskin gelding work at the entrance of one of the pens, juking left and right as other cowboys push black cows and calves toward them. Thompson and the gelding let the cows slip by; the calves stay put.
The buckskin, Becaco Nate, stays light on his feet, reading the cattle and at the same time listening to Thompson.
“He’s really cowy, and that’s what you’re looking for in a horse,” Thompson says. “He’s just a 5-year-old now, but he knows a cow from a calf. We were stripping the calves that day. It’s really neat to ride him. He knows what to do — let that cow go by and hold that calf.”
Thompson day works for several ranches in North Texas, helping with branding, weaning, doctoring yearlings and various other horseback jobs. He keeps a string of 15 horses, typically buying started 2-year-olds and selling his 6- and 7-year-olds.
“Nate,” who he purchased from the Beggs Ranch during a Return to the Remuda Sale a few years ago, is the ideal horse for Thompson’s line of work.
“He’s really good about getting off my feet,” Thompson says. “He’s got a lot of action. He’s pretty laid back, until you put him in front of a cow.
“A lot of them city guys want to buy a ranch horse. They bring it home, stall it up, feed the hell out of it, then they get back on it two or three weeks later and it bucks them off. That’s a ranch horse, and that’s what I’m looking for. When I squeeze my legs or touch the reins, he needs to be responsive right then.”
Thompson also needs a horse that pays attention to its surroundings while gathering cattle.
“You can’t be on a deadhead,” he says. “There are holes out in the pasture. While you’re trotting and looking for cattle, you want to be on something that is looking around all the time because it doesn’t want to get in a wreck. I don’t want to get in a wreck, either.”
One of the toughest jobs is roping and doctoring yearling calves, which is Thompson’s primary task from February through early July. He works with James Pinaston, the cowboss on a 16,000-acre ranch near Whiskey Flats. Heading and heeling yearlings in the open provides an opportunity for Thompson to train his younger horses, introducing his 3-year-old horses to heel shots and graduating his 4-year-olds to heading.
“We doctor anywhere from 15 to 30 head a day,” Thompson says. “So I bring two horses. I try to give them four or five days off in between because I don’t want their backs sore. When you jerk 15 or 20 head of yearlings down, it’s not like team roping. It’s pretty hard on them after you’ve ridden 15 miles.
“James Pinaston and I communicate back and forth: ‘What are you going to ride tomorrow?’ If he brings a colt, I bring a good horse. If I’m gonna bring a colt, he’ll ride a good horse.”
Back at the corrals, Nate darts in front of a bald-faced calf trying to sneak past on the right, while Thompson eyes another calf coming from the left. Sorting cows and calves in pens can be noisy, hectic and physically demanding. Nate handles the challenge because Thompson didn’t overwhelm the gelding with the job as a young horse.
“The first couple of times I rode Nate at a weaning, I let one of the other guys do the sorting,” he says. “Sometimes I may ride a younger horse for that, but you can get his mind scattered. So you’ve got to know when to pull up and say, ‘Okay, that’s enough.’ Just ride him out and let somebody else take your hole. You’ve got to expose him, but you don’t want to throw him to the lions. Ease him into it.”
This article was originally published in the May 2012 issue of Western Horseman.
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