As far as Professional Bull Riders Inc. is concerned, there are two athletes involved in every bull ride: the cowboy and the bull. Both get a score at the end of the ride, and it is the combined total that determines how the rider fares at the end of the night. A bull that is having a bad night can cost a cowboy money and points, which is why you’ll occasionally see a rider spurring his bull to jump a little higher or spin a little faster.
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| Jerry Nelson’s Big Bucks, the PBR’s bull of the year, throws Australian rider Greg Potter. |
The PBR has been working for years with stock contractors to develop more bulls capable of putting on a good show. In fact, just as the organization offers its top riders equity in the business, it is in business with bull contractors across the country through American Bucking Bull Inc., which was formed in 2003 when 20 stock contractors paid $25,000 each for a combined share of 50 percent of the new operation, which tracks and certifies the bloodlines of bucking bulls.
Other contractors pay $350 a year to work with ABBI and the PBR, and can register bulls for $48 each. This year, 11,000 bulls were registered with ABBI, said Randy Bernard, CEO of the Pro Bull Riders. As many as 17,000 may be registered in 2006.
At its most basic level, here’s how the stock contracting business works:
Let’s say your goal is to own the PBR Bull of the Year. You might start by buying 10 cows, preferably from a championship line. Then you would buy 10 straws, or vials, of semen from a champion bull such as Little Yellow Jacket, the bull of the year from 2002 to 2004, for $1,000 a straw.
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| Plush dolls of top bulls are just one of more than 500 licensed PBR products being sold. |
If you got five bulls from your 10 cows, you’d soon begin testing them by putting dummies on their backs to see which ones buck the best. At ABBI futurity events, young bulls are judged on their bucking prowess with lightweight dummies that fall off after eight seconds, teaching the bull that it can rid itself of the weight on its back. A bull that shows promise is moved up to events with live riders.
Of course, even if you develop a top bull that others will pay to breed their cows with, you might still find the business a bit challenging.
Jerry Nelson, a Texas oilfield operator whose bull Big Bucks was just voted by PBR riders as the 2005 Bull of the Year, was blunt about the business of being a bull contractor.
“It ain’t worth a shit,” he said. And that’s taking into consideration the $25,000 he gets for having the bull of the year, and the boost that will give to merchandise such as Big Bucks stuffed animals.
But Nelson, whose Frontier Rodeo Co. has bred thousands of bulls, said that for him, as for many of the other contractors he deals with, rodeo is in the blood. It’s more a hobby than a livelihood, Nelson said, and it’s an addictive one.
“I’ve made a lot of money in the oilfield business,” he said, “but if someone came to me today and said I had to make a choice between the oilfield and the rodeo, we’d be having a big oilfield equipment sale tomorrow.”
