by Terry Lidral
Don Kish’s extraordinary bull knowledge is a product of spending his life with bucking bulls. As a young kid working with bulls on the Growney Ranch, Kish found himself fascinated by the bulls that could buck. And that was the beginning of Kish’s lifelong passion for and legendary career in the bucking bull industry.
“I’ve always been amazed to watch a bucking bull buck,” Kish told us about the reason he was drawn to the bovine athletes. “Bucking bulls defy what their bodies are built to do. Now horses, they are designed to jump and kick and run. That’s what they do naturally. But bulls just aren’t made the same way.”
“Bulls have character,” Kish went on to say of the animals who have been his life’s work. “When I was a kid, I’d work bulls on the Growney place. I was drawn to them and I studied them. I saw that the better ones had personality.”
That personality, combined with the bulls’ athletic ability made Kish a fan and more.
“You find a lot of character in elite bulls. But when you get around the great bulls, you can see their intelligence. They think and are creative. They draw you in and they are addicting. Bucking bulls are my addiction,” Kish told us with a matter-of-fact laugh at the admission.
Kish was still in high school when the Growney Brothers started their rodeo company in the late 1970’s and tapped Kish to be in charge of the bulls. At that time, rodeo bulls were bought at the sale barn and were considered by stock contractors, rodeo committees and bull riders to be of little value. But Kish saw it differently.
“As a rule, with a few exceptions, bulls were secondary in the rodeos back then,” explained Kish. “They weren’t considered to be athletes so they were fed junk hay. There was no feeding program to build them up. There was no special care or attention given to them. They were sorry animals and they didn’t think. They weren’t creative. That wasn’t my idea of a bucking bull.”
Bob Barmby had been raising bucking bulls since the 1940’s and 50’s. Developing bloodlines with bucking genetics was an idea that intrigued Kish. He saw raising his own bucking bulls as an alternative to the time and expense it took to sort through sale barn bulls. And he also saw it as an opportunity to elevate the reputation of the bucking bull by producing quality bovine athletes.
“Back in the 1970’s and 80’s no one was raising bucking bulls. I knew that Bob Barmby had developed a bloodline that produced bulls with the bucking trait. But that bloodline had nearly disappeared,” Kish told us about the difficulty he had in finding the Barmby genetics.
Kish had studied the traits of elite bucking bulls and he envisioned a program where bucking genetics were a product of selective breeding. He knew the traits it took to make an elite bucking bull. And he knew that the Barmby bloodline was developed to include those traits.
The Barmby breeding program produced The ProRodeo Hall of Fame bull Oscar #16. An inaugural member of the Hall of Fame, Oscar #16 was also inducted into California Rodeo Salinas Hall of Fame and the Bull Riding Hall of Fame. With 300 outs in his career, the bull gave up only 8 qualified rides. It was a son of Oscar #16 by the name of Fonzie that set Kish’s breeding program onto the path to its long-time success.
“Bulls are hard,” said Kish. “It takes a special person that understands how to sort them, how to go fast, when to go slow. They have to either have a natural talent or catch on fast.”
For Kish, the success of his bucking bull program has come from maintaining a group of those special people who share his passion for the bulls.
“It takes a group of dedicated people working together in order for a bucking bull program to be a success,” Kish told us. “Everyone has a part in the process that they do especially well. For instance, when bulls are being hauled to an event, someone has to go with the bulls and someone has to be responsible for taking care of the ones at home. And that responsibility has to be taken very seriously.”
“The bulls have to come first and everyone who has ever worked with me understands that,” continued Kish. “You arrive home and you feed the bulls and put them away before you take care of yourself. If I’m hungry, the bulls are hungry and they can’t snack along the way like we can.”
In keeping with putting the bulls first, Kish doesn’t tolerate rivalry and negative interactions between people working in his bull program.
“In a successful bucking bull program, there’s no room for jealousy or rivalry,” said Kish. “Negative attitudes get in the way and keep people from being the best at what they do. And it takes everyone being their best to make a great program. Everybody has to be on board.”
“Bulls are individuals. You watch them and you’ll see they all do things differently,” he went on to explain. “You get to know what to expect from the different bulls in your herd.”
Self-preservation, in large part, depends on knowing your bulls. Kish has raised bulls that he says would get anyone in trouble.
“Some bulls will bluff you. They make a show but won’t come after you. And then there are those that are real,” Kish said with a laugh. “Watch him breath and you can tell, ‘This one is going to take me all the way to the fence.’ It’s a matter of knowing your bulls.”
One of Kish’s favorite bull men was bullfighter Joe Baumgartner. Baumgartner’s bull knowledge made him one of the greatest bullfighters in the history of the sport of rodeo.
“Joe Baumgartner really loved working with the bulls. He was addicted to them, just like me,” Kish gave a chuckle. “He was around the bulls every day sorting them and observing them. He got to know what they were going to do. That’s why he was such a great bullfighter.”
Baumgartner used his bull knowledge in the rodeo arena to be at the right place at the right time.
“Joe mastered reading the bulls. If the bull bucked with its eyes open, Joe would watch where the bull was looking to go after the ride. A bull that closed its eyes wasn’t going to run off. Joe would get the feel of the bull, the way he bucked. By studying the bull, Joe was able to pick out a point to be at the end of the ride,” Kish said with admiration in his voice for the ProRodeo Hall of Fame bullfighter.
Kish understands that it’s in the character of some bulls to fight. It’s part of the bucking bull business. And he’s had his share of losses.
“Sometimes, one of the hardest things to do is to keep bulls alive,” Kish told us matter-of-factly. “You put forty bulls together, they fight. It’s their nature. We had a real good crop of bulls but they’d kill each other. It was scary. We’d go out in the morning and find another dead. It was terrible, but sometimes bad things just happen.”
Kish also understands that some bulls will just try too hard. Or that their athleticism is so strong that they hurt themselves.
“Some of the best bulls I ever had I never even got to buck in an event. You buck some when they’re little and they get crippled. Or there are the ones who get injured in competition and they’re done,” Kish said with a sigh. “The bull Wolf Dancer got hurt on his first trip. It was one of those bad things that happen.”
Understanding the bull has always been a major priority for Kish. To do that, he works with the bull to see how it is wired.
“Some people make every animal come to them. I think that’s a mistake,” Kish said about his approach to working bulls. “Every bull is a totally different beast. Some do best out of a left-hand delivery, some do best out of the right. They don’t all stand the same way. They don’t react to the chute the same. To get the best out of the animal, let him do it his way. If it’s natural for him, he’ll do a better job and is less likely to hurt himself.”
And for Kish, it’s not so much about winning, but getting the best out of your bull.
“I’m going to be the best trainer I can be. I’m going to compete with the best bull I’ve got. If that animal’s best is second, then I’ll be happy with that second place,” Kish explained. “It’s all about getting the bull to do his best.”
As for hauling bulls, Kish believes it has a big effect, especially for bulls bucking at the large events such as the WNFR or the PBR Finals.
“Stress affects bulls in different ways. But I think some bulls handle the stress at the WNFR and the PBR Finals because they are hauled to a lot of major events over the course of the year. They get used to the travel and the housing conditions. And some of them travel together in the same trailer all year.”
“Bulls don’t always buck well at the big events” continued Kish. “There are a lot of changes they have to deal with. At the WNFR, the bulls are taken care of and handled by a designated group of people. There is one kind of feed for all the bulls. And the corral management may be very different than what some bulls are used to. There is a definite schedule that the bulls will be on.”
Kish estimates that he has had somewhere around 160 or 170 bulls buck at Finals events with over 300 trips. And he’s had great success. He uses rotation, nutrition and an integrated bucking and resting schedule to manage his bull herd over the course of a competition season.
“In general, all my bulls have bucked well at the Finals events,” Kish told us proudly. ”And the ones that didn’t were just not great bulls. It’s about bull management. I spend three or four months in advance to make sure my bulls will excel.”
Don Kish has produced and hauled some of the greatest PBR and NFR Finals bulls in the history of the sport. You can find information on those bulls here: https://www.kishsbuckinbest.com/bull-awards.php
“My goal has always been to be better than the other guy,” Kish went on to say. “I imagine it’s everybody’s goal. But to reach that goal, I knew all my bulls had to buck well at every event. So, I developed a rotation system that had bulls at home resting and getting nutrition while I took other bulls to events. If I took 30 bulls to an event one week, I’d take another set of 30 to the next event. That way, the bulls aren’t worn out by the end of the season when it’s time for the Finals.”
In his lifetime, Kish has gained a wealth of bull knowledge. There’s the day-to-day physical part of it and then there’s the part about creating a breeding program that continually produces great bulls.
“When I started out, I was either going to be stupid or lucky. Everyone thought I was nuts to try to develop a breeding program. But I didn’t care,” Kish said about being a maverick in the bucking stock industry. “I thought, ‘If you can dream it up, you can do it.’ And I was right.”
“But I’ve learned that it’s all an experiment. You’re always learning things. When you put genetics together, you don’t know what’s going to happen,” Kish continued. “There’s a bucking gene and the goal is that by breeding all of this gene in there that I’ve raised the percentage that the offspring will buck. My question is, ‘If you keep putting bucking cattle together, how far can you go?’”
Kish finds the proof of his theory in the consistent production of high-quality bucking bulls.
“For me, every 6 or 7 years something good happens and I get a calf crop where everything bucks. It makes me look like I knew what I was doing,” he laughed. “I’ve had great luck with outcrossing. And some of my best bulls, like the ones from my first calf crop, are out of cows like jerseys and spotted longhorns with no bucking bloodlines.”
And what does Kish think of modern breeding methods and trending bulls as sires?
“If I were starting my program today, I’d use the modern procedure like AI’ing and embryo collection. It’s a great way to add something new to get diversity in your bloodlines. There’s the bull of the day and the cow of the day that everybody wants to use. You can alter the outcome by breeding to a specific bull or cow. It’s all about that bucking gene.”
That gene that makes bull want to buck has been, and continues to be Don Kish’s passion. And it’s the bulls that have kept him in the business for so long. “It’s not always about the money and it’s not always about winning. I’ve watched the bulls being born. I’ve weaned them and bucked them. I am addicted to bucking bulls. They still amaze me.”
Author: Terry Lidral
Terry Lidral is a western writer/journalist who lives in Idaho. She is the publisher and editor of the online magazine Bucking Stock Talk and the online magazine Western Living Journal. Her publishing credits include Storyteller for Real American Cowboy Magazine, writing feature articles for Humps N Horns Magazine as well as a wide variety of national and international web sites, historical magazines and news publications. She is known for her "up close and personal" profiles of celebrities and industry moguls such as NPR's Tom Bodett; PBR's Wiley Petersen and D.H. Page, PRCA's Sammy Andrews, Cindy Rosser and Julio Moreno to name a few. She has been applauded for her way of making a personal connection between her readers and her subjects. She indulges in her love of rodeo by serving as an associate board member for the Caldwell Night Rodeo. She is also an accomplished trainer and handler in dog agility. Her shelties Amelie and Milo are titled in NADAC, USDAA and AKC.
