Rodeos take normally tame, docile animals and provoke them into behavior that makes them appear to be fierce and aggressive.
Rodeos consider these animals to be cheap, expendable, and replaceable. They are used time and again before their bruised and battered bodies end up at the slaughterhouse.
Bulls and horses are tormented in the chutes prior to release into the ring. They are forced to wear bucking straps, and the rider uses spurs, which dig into the animals' flesh. One rodeo cowboy said of bucking straps and electric prods, "If you can't use those devices, then you have no rodeo." (Pittsburgh Tribune-Review Dec. 26, 2000).
Bucking straps are painful. They are cinched tightly around the animals' genitals or abdomen, which makes the horse or steer buck to try and shake off the strap.
Places as diverse as Pittsburgh and the state of Ohio have outlawed the use of the bucking strap on the grounds that it is inhumane. Other states have banned throwing baby calves and goats to the ground and binding their legs.
Steve Gander, organizer of the "World's Toughest Rodeo," admits that bucking horses and bulls are "prodded with an electrical hotshot."
Bucking straps, spurs, electric prods, and severe tail-twisting are all painful ways of forcing animals into aggressive behavior.
Injuries to animals, such as deep internal organ bruising, hemorrhaging, bone fractures, ripped tendons, and torn ligaments and muscles, are all expected and anticipated in this violent tradition.
Source: BucktheRodeo.com