He calls himself the “mammary hunter.”
And for good reason.
Sundre’s Bruce Burrell won the wild-cow-milking event at the 60th annual Water Valley Rodeo on June 1. But before he could elaborate, or even properly show off the dazzling belt buckle he won for his effort, he rode off to compete in the team-roping event.
So he left it to pals Bryn Thiessen and Lynn Friesen to explain the finer points of this udderly-chaotic rodeo-opening event.
“I think you gotta feed near the bottom,” joked Thiessen, a cowboy poet, preacher, rancher and wild-cow milker. “If you’re a good cow-milker, you’re going to look at those cows first and pick out the cow you want to try for. You’re going to look at the shape of her udder and the shape of her horns.”
For those unfamiliar with wild-cow milking, cows are turned loose in the rodeo ring and teams of two chase one down, rope it, “mug” it and then coax enough milk into a bucket to pour. The first team to do that wins.
The roper on horseback ropes the cow, the mugger will follow up on foot and settle the animal enough for the roper to then do the milking.
“The ability to run helps,” Thiessen understated. “But some of the best cow-milkers can’t move fast enough to out-run a slow election.”
And Friesen, Burrell’s mugger, says cow-whispering doesn’t work.
“Just muscle it,” Friesen said. “They (cows) make all the decisions. There’s a technique to do it fast and safely. If you don’t do it that way, you could get hurt.”
And, as the wild-cow stock contractor for Water Valley Rodeo, Thiessen is particular about the cows he brings. They need to be active, but not too sour.
“A good wild-cow-milking cow; if they got horns, they look better,” explained Thiessen. “I don’t want to get somebody hurt, I don’t want my cows hurt. So I don’t want them that rank.”
When it’s all over, Thiessen takes them back to the pasture and turns them loose.
