Rancher Bob Kinford shows how to move burros from horseback by staying calm, taking small angled steps, and turning away from their heads instead of confronting them. Fear in burros comes from aggressive handling or stud horses, not the rider. The technique is simple: patience, positioning, and respect, not force.
attention to it, they're going to get away from you, especially if you're in rough country. Once again, just let them go by me. Already starting to slow down. Yeah, I just backed up and they stepped. They're just real sensitive. See right there, just 2, 3 steps and boy, she flew backwards. Okay, now I'm gonna let them go by me. Fucking cow, when you go the same direction they're going, they speed up. They know they can't go They know they can't go any further, so they just go ahead and stop. They're not afraid. They're not bouncing off the walls or anything. Looky there. It's only taken 10 or 15 minutes and they are walking by me, not trotting by me. I'm going to open them up at the big gate. Okay, now I'm gonna let them go by me, and they got about 2 pens they can go through. The worst thing in the world you can do with them. And they're getting to where they're just thinking, kind of relaxing. But it's in how you do it, not the fact that you're doing it. This theory that you can't do anything with burros horseback is just a deal that's propagated by people that That do not handle cattle or horses or mules or anything in a way that the animals can understand. I'm gonna go up here and just move these burros through everybody a couple times. As you can see, these burros aren't really truly afraid of me. They're not afraid of a person on horse. Been at this about maybe 45 minutes working with them alone and just turned them into here, and in this pen they could hardly care less about me. I'm gonna go over here towards the fence, turn them around. Okay, now I'm gonna turn them out ahead of the llamas. You notice there I'm not going at their head. I'm going away from them. People make the biggest mistake on when they start turning animals, especially something that's a little bit flighty like a burro, is they're wanting to go to the head all the time to turn them. And all that does is speed them up. If they're A little flighty, a little speedy as it is, it's going to speed them up more. And as long as the guy's got enough room to get to where you need to be for the speed they're going, you can get around them. You don't get around them, you move to where they're going to move away from you rather than than trying to put pressure on them to get them away. And now I'm going to let everything out into this big pen. Burros are probably going to go all the way down to the other end. I fully expect them to. Once they go out of here, they're going to go, oh, we can go, and they're going to go down to the far end. But as soon as they do, I'm just gonna ease down there, stand there for a minute, and I'm gonna bring them back. This is no big deal. If you notice, they're not running off. They can see these cattle going out the pen. They're not running off. They're not even trotting off. They are not afraid of this person on horseback because— Yeah, there they are, far in. Take them down, go down and take them back up. But if you notice, they're not— no one's looking at me. They're kind of relaxed. They're starting to look now, but they're not panicking. They're not afraid of me. All you have to do is treat them with a little bit of respect, and it's just like a horse or cow or anything else. They're going to give you the respect. And if you don't give them a reason To fear you, they lose their fear of you pretty rapidly. I stopped and they, they were faithful to their stop. I'm gonna drop down over here, see if they'll go around me. Yeah, I'm dropping around the back of them. They're not going fast. I'm not chasing them, and look what they're doing. They're coming around me. Just like a cow. It's not rocket science or anything else, but if you don't set yourself up right, it won't work. If you do things like have a stud horse wandering around out in the pasture that you're That you're taking them into that'll start chasing them, yeah, you'll get them in the pasture and then they'll leave. But it— they aren't leaving because they are afraid of the man on horseback. They're leaving because the stinking stud horse was harassing them and chasing them. Just riding a little bit of an angle away from them. See, I'm only having to move 1 or 2 steps. It's not something There's nothing here that's rocket science. You're not going yeehaw and chasing into them. Just one or two steps at a time is all it takes. And that's why burros are afraid of people, because, oh my God, that burro goes to do something, they got to get around it, they got to get to the head, they got to do all that stuff that is totally Not necessary. Probably in a week, we'll probably be ready to go out with everything.
