Injuries and Deaths
Although rodeo cowboys voluntarily risk injury by participating in events, the animals they use have no such choice. Because speed is a factor in many rodeo events, the risk of accidents is high.

By the end of the annual Calgary Stampede in Alberta, Canada, several animals are usually dead. In 2005, horses destined for the event stampeded in fear as they were being herded across a bridge; some jumped and others were pushed into the river. Nine horses died.9 In 2009, a steer who suffered a spinal cord injury during a roping event as well as three horses died.10 Six horses died in the 2010 Stampede, two from heart attacks, one from a broken back, and another from a shoulder injury so severe that the attending veterinarian ordered the animal to be euthanized.11,12

At the 2010 Colorado rodeo in Denver, 11 animals were injured—two fatally—during an event in which a horseback rider grabs a cow by the tail and slams the animal to the ground. Animal cruelty charges were filed against the organizers of the rodeo after sheriff’s investigators reported that some animals’ tails had ripped off and that animals’ bones had been broken.13

Calves who are roped while running routinely have their necks snapped back by the lasso, often resulting in neck injuries.14 Even Bud Kerby, owner and operator of Bar T Rodeos Inc., agrees that calf roping is inhumane. He told the St. George Spectrum that he “wouldn’t mind seeing calf roping phased out.”15 During Rodeo Houston, a bull with a broken neck suffered for a full 15 minutes before he was euthanized following a steer-wrestling competition, which was described by a local newspaper as an event in which “cowboys violently twist the heads of steers weighing about 500 pounds to bring them to the ground.”16

Rodeo association rules are not effective in preventing injuries and are not strictly enforced, and penalties are not severe enough to deter abuse. For example, one rule states, “Any member guilty of mistreatment of livestock anywhere on the rodeo grounds shall be fined $250 for the first offense with that fine progressively doubling with each offense thereafter.”17 But fines are small compared to the large purses that are at stake. Rules also allow the animals to be confined or transported in vehicles for up to 24 hours without being properly fed, watered, or unloaded.

The End of the Trail
The late Dr. C.G. Haber, a veterinarian who spent 30 years as a federal meat inspector, worked in slaughterhouses and saw many animals discarded from rodeos and sold for slaughter. He described the animals as being so extensively bruised that the only areas in which their skin was attached to their flesh were the head, neck, legs, and belly. He described seeing animals “with 6–8 ribs broken from the spine, and at times puncturing the lungs.” Haber saw animals with “as much as 2–3 gallons of free blood accumulated under the detached skin.”18 These injuries resulted when animals were thrown in calf-roping events and when people jumped on them from the backs of horses during steer wrestling.

Credit: PETA