Friday, October 21, 2016

The Pro Bull Riding World Championship's most feared bucking bull, Air Time, is owned by former NFL star Jared Allen

SI:
“Eighty percent of how good your bull ends up being has to do with the mother they’re out of,” said Matt Scharping, stock contractor for Allen’s team. “We spend tons of time, money and energy trying to get the female side of the breeding process correct, because a cow that doesn’t work eats as much as a cow that works. You look at a cow’s traits and think about what you can complement them with by envisioning the calf.


...

“Air Time was an accident,” Sharping explained. “A buddy of mine got a heifer calf from some partners of his. The heifer was supposed to be open, meaning not bred. All of the sudden, she gave birth to this little, spotted calf. They had to figure out what happened. It turned out that the heifer hit a heat cycle early and a bull jumped the fence and bred her.”

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“We don’t practice him, but you see the work that goes into conditioning and feeding him in the shoots,” Allen said. “He had some shoot issues at first, but I liked that. I liked that he was a little unstable. He gets into the minds of the cowboys. There’s something that’s just not quite right about him.