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Nashville, Tenn. And Friday night at PBRS Stampede Days were more than 50 bulls on site in the Bridgestone Arena. If it works like many animals, it’s because it is – but for good reason. No bull is driven more than once a night, which means that each animal works for a maximum of eight seconds on a given day. It’s a good job if you can get it.
It is an incredible operation to load them in and out every night. And while the riders may get most of the limelight, these bulls are also athletes.
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Professional bull riders (PBR) 2025 Release the Beast Bull Riding Event at the Golden 1 Center in Sacramento, California, USA on February 1, 2025. (Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“These bulls must be physically in the form of bending with so much intensity,” Dr. Douglas G. Corey, President of Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s Animal Welfare Committee. “These bulls go from standing in a chess to immediately shooting the hind legs and spinning, vri and bucking, and they maintain it until the rider is from my back. It is for me real athletics.”
And 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 scene.
“Much of the training is done on calves with the box dummy, you know, and then they learn a routine with it,” Manning told Outkick Friday. “And when we start putting riders on them it takes them [not] Very long to adapt. And then they better, they come here and we just keep rolling with them. “
Diet also means, but it varies from ranch to ranch.
“Mine is nothing too crazy. I just feed them really well, try to get them all they want to eat. And they are also out on grass where I am,” Manning said. “Some people do it a little differently. Some people, they are on dirt cliffs, 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 shocked and it works well for me.”
While Manning takes special care of all his bulls, he has had more than a few favorites over the years. Buffalo Heifer, he said, was pretty special. He also loved Kickin ‘chicken and Satan’s seeds.
As for how he comes with these names?
“Oh, shoot, I don’t know. We just brainstormed,” Manning said. “You hear cool things, you watch a movie or song, you hear something cool and you just, I write it down in my notes and when I find a bull that fits it, I use it.”
PBR’s Bovine Athletes get first -class treatment
A professional bull rider runs a bull in PBR Rodeo in Madison Square Garden on January 5, 2025 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Dr. Corey expressed it bluntly: “A 1,200 -to -2,000 bull that can bend 4 meters in the air, return and make six or eight rotations for a period of 8 seconds is an athlete.”
And as is the case with elite athletes, the red carpet is rolled out for them.
PBR is quick to remind fans that security and welfare are the highest priorities and it is worth noting how well these animals are treated. Bulls live on scattered ranches, travel in comfort and retire for light life on the farm – often as breeding animals, sometimes as family pets.
“If one of my bulls comes to PBR, he has earned the right to live on my ranch as breeding,” said the late Bucking Bull Breeder Kaycee Simpson once. “And when he dies we give him a tombstone.”
As colleagues contractor JW Hart put it, “Probably 95% of the bulls who retire, they go in, I assume, the retirement program … and if we like their breeding and their pedigrees well enough, we start breeding to them.” That’s when they get to “live the simple life with the women.”
Gain – Good job if you can get it.
Damage is meanwhile rare. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association, a Bucking Bull has only a 0.004 percent chance of maintaining a life-threatening injury at a PBR event. And every bull that is injured gets first -class veterinary care.
“My son plays football and I will say this,” said stock contractor Matt Scharping. “Bulls are injured far less than footballers do.”
At the end of the day, Bull Riding takes two athletes: one on top and one doing bucking. And PBR is not found without both of them performing their jobs.
After watching his bulls perform in Nashville on Friday night, Manning was happy with what he saw from his Bovine Athletes.
“We did pretty well,” he said. “I’m proud of them all.”
