Post by saysfaa on May 13, 2017 22:09:59 GMT -5
... A good stockperson is going to be an authority figure of course, but a good stockperson can also go in any pen of unknown animals and work them in an almost completely predictable way. They are touching on a predator/prey relationship. How cattle, as prey animals, react to the pressure to flee. Comparatively a person who's become a boss cow within their own herd may not possess the stock skills to move strange animals. Especially in scenarios like many members here have where their cattle are so quiet. Quiet cattle do not respond to subtle as well. You have to be obvious. Whereas stockmanship is very subtle.
You go into a pen of cattle off pasture, they have decent sized flight zones, you can walk through them quietly with your eyes downcast without disturbing them and then move them from 30 feet away by looking up, turning your shoulders and hips one direction, and pressing on the edge of their flight zones. Quiet cattle have next to no flight zone ...
You can move quiet cattle too - without whacking them or (shudder) chasing them. You use the same principals of pressing, it just looks a bit different. You press with words or leaning your body against her or a knuckle or an elbow or how you look at her instead of turning your body at a distance but it is the same principal. It is much, much, much, much easier and safer for the people and the cattle to manage cattle as a stockman than to try to become the boss cow. If you are chasing them, you are pressing too hard. Backing off the pressure just enough to move them slowly where you want them to go is not giving in to them; they still go through that gate or wait at the gate or move that foot back or whatever. It isn't even slower in the long run.
I think I finally see what I've been missing through months of reading about people being the boss cow. I really couldn't (well, still can't) see why people would want to try to be the boss cow. Far too much stress and adversity for me. But I haven't been able to articulate what is different about how I do it.
Oh, and to answer the original question.... I don't know what licking means but I don't like it so they don't do it to me, I just back them up a bit if they try. Even if they are locked in a stanchion, then I back them up a fraction of a step. I do know what leaning their head on me would mean and I don't let them do that either by the same method - I back them up if they try but usually they never try because I also don't put myself in a position that they would consider doing it.