![]() Super Freak’s sons have bucked at the PBR World Finals for the last four years. Jerome and Tammy Davis, bucking bull breeders and trainers. Since his accident he has dedicated his time to raising and training bulls and he works with his wife, Tiffany, to advance the sport on the east coast. But in 1998 he broke his neck in a bull riding accident, and was paralysed. Ī former bull rider, Mr Davis himself was Professional Rodeo Cowboy Association (PRCA) World Champion in 1995. Mr Davis breeds and trains bucking bulls in addition to organising events for PBR, and his bull Super Freak won the American Heritage event in 2008 which netted the animal, two years old at the time, a prize of $90,000. “We’re looking to breed the next big winning animal.” “This is like the race horse business,” says Jerome Davis of Davis Rodeo in Archdale, North Carolina. “The era of cowboys mounting mostly mediocre animals with the odd really difficult or ‘rank’ bull coming out of the chute is long gone,” he adds. “There are just so few inferior bulls nowadays.” “The best bulls aren’t really any better than they were years ago,” says Mr Long. Slade Long works with ABBI on its DNA-based registry and oversees – a database where each score attained every bucking bull in its performances is carefully recorded. Its data includes ‘pedigrees’, ear tag numbers and a visual description, and every animal has an electronic chip. The company also manages a registry of almost 200,000 bucking cattle with DNA held from animals across the US, Canada, Brazil and Australia. In one initiative, ABBI introduced Back Seat Buckers to allow members of the public with no ranch or livestock skills the opportunity to buy shares of a 100 per cent managed bull. As well as keeping a detailed database of bucking bull livestock, ABBI promotes best practices for breeders and encourages wider bull ownership among the general public. To help regulate the sector, the PBR established the American Bucking Bull Inc (ABBI) in 2004. Exclusive Genetics offer a lofty $500,000 first prize for the winner of their event.īushwacker, the most successful bucking bull of modern times. Young bulls can also compete in lucrative ‘futurity’ competitions, where there are no riders and the animals are judged solely on their bucking performance. At a major event like this, bulls can earn $2,400 each time they provide PBR cowboys a ride – or an ‘out’, as it’s known in rodeo cowboy circles. At the PBR end-of-season World Finals held every year in October, three- to four-year-old bulls compete for a chance of winning $200,000. This is understandable given his semen now sells for $5,000 per straw.Īnd then there’s the prize money. His owner once refused a purchase price for him of $700,000. Take legendary bull Bushwacker, a rodeo veteran who retired in 2014 after earning $600,000. Oscar, a legendary bull from California in the the 1970's. Stocking the rodeo is no longer a sideline for ranchers. And through careful management and much investment, many breeders and owners have been able to capitalise on this aspect of the bull-riding boom. A steady stream of top quality bulls has developed along with the sport and has played its own part in expanding bull-riding’s appeal. Here the top riders compete for an end of season bonus of $1 million as part of $10 million in prize money offered throughout the year.ĭriving this success, alongside the daredevil riders, are the other stars of the show – the bulls. In the arena, 3 million fans now watch bull riding, compared to 300,000 in 1995. Since formation of the Professional Bull Riders (PBR) organisation in 1992, rodeo has been expanding both in popularity and as a business empire under the influence of the PBR the sport has grown into a multi-million dollar industry.Ī weekly bull-riding TV show sponsored by the Ford motor company – the Built Ford Tough Series – is featured on CBS and networks globally, broadcast to half a billion homes in 50 countries.
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