Rural Heritage June/July 2026

Having a lead on the yoke allows for an emergency brake with 6-week-old Devons.

PUT A COLLAR ON ’EM I used collars to train my first team, mainly because I had collars but didn’t own halters. Since I was training a pair of generally calm and well-mannered bottle calves, it worked nicely. But when I started my team of Shorthorns, they were each 550 pounds, 6 months old, and had not ever been handled. In that case, halters seemed more prudent than collars. One of the main proponents of training with a collar was Connecticut 4-H leader Ray Ludwig. Tillers’ founder Dick Roosenberg describes Ray as the best trainer he’s seen due to his incredible patience with animals and clear, disciplined directions. In The Pride and Joy of Working Cattle, he says, “… The calf is being trained to respond to verbal commands and not merely to comply when being pushed … so the trainer must be careful to avoid tugging on the calf to make him obey. Because the use of halters provides a ready ‘handle’ to promote this bad habit, I recommend the use of collars … forced to rely only on voice commands and gentle taps to determine

what is expected of him, then, the calf will become more alert and responsive to his trainer.” One of Ruy Ludwig’s former 4-H kids, Justin Riendeau, described the decision to use collars this way: “We were talking about calves and some of the kids that were in the club. He was like, ‘No halters. I don't like halters.’ And we always trained with collars. That's how I did all my calves: training them with collars and a lead. … It almost gave you too much control over the animal [to use a halter]. He wanted you to be able to stop the animal if you needed to be able to stop it, but he wanted that animal to learn a voice command. He felt that some teamsters were too reliant on [halters]. We never really used halters at all. We had them for transporting the animals, or if the vet came, or something like that, we used them, but Ray is a guy who likes collars and that's the way he taught us.” WORKING WITHOUT A HALTER OR COLLAR Now, imagine taking the halter or collar discussion to its logical end. What if the animals simply learned

June/July 2026

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