The Intimate Bond by Brian Fagan

afraid of heights and sudden movement. They learn fear from one another. As a friend of Grandin’s aptly expressed it, they are “curiously afraid” when confronted with something unfamiliar. The curiosity and uncertainty cause mild anxiety and vigilance. They want to investigate something new but are afraid of the possible outcomes. Forced novelty just doesn’t work.
    Cattle are likely to be upset when they have to be moved. Tame cattle will follow buckets of grain. They will even move into new pastures by truck if they know there is food at the end of the trip. They are familiar with the handling procedures. Herding cattle over longer distances is much harder, especially on an open range, where there are no intensively managed pastures. The most successful moves are those that cause as little fear in the animals as possible. The old stereotypical cowhand drives in Westerns, with shouting and whistling cowboys and galloping steeds, are dead wrong, for such behavior causes cattle to run and panic. The most effective way to move cattle over longer distances is by pressuring their flight zones with gentle movements, where you back off when they move in the right direction. Once the cattle bunch instead of scattering, they can be quietly moved as a herd. Their loosely arranged formation coincides with your giving them more protection as they graze. This is common behavior with other animals, such as antelope. In wide-open spaces like the Serengeti Plains in East Africa, for instance, antelope feed calmly even when a pride of lions is nearby. When the lions stalk them, they know it.
Bos primigenius
had similarhardwired predefense behaviors. By using gentle herding methods, the modern-day cattle herder invokes these behaviors. Once the cattle are bunched, he or she can move deeper into the flight zone and move them along, using their natural defense instincts. This is not true of dairy cows, which are used to being led toward pasture or a corral.
    Cattle handling probably reached its greatest skill level during the nineteenth century CE , when cowboys drove thousands of head of cattle over enormous distances of the American West between 1866 and 1886. Twenty million cattle traveled from Texas to railheads in Kansas such as Abilene, for shipment to stockyards in Chicago and points farther east. The cowboys moved the cattle slowly and quietly, for they knew that stress from rough handling would kill hundreds of animals along the way. On average, a Texas-to-Kansas drive numbered about three thousand head, with at least ten cowboys driving and watching the cattle day and night, moving them about twenty-four kilometers (fifteen miles) a day. It could take as long as two months to complete a drive. Not that such drives were unique to the American West. In medieval Europe, Hungarian Grey cattle traveled across the Danube to the beef markets of western Europe. The Swiss drove cattle across the Alps and into Italy, until sedentary dairy farming became more profitable. In the American West, the expansion of railroads throughout the country (also chronic overgrazing) tolled the death knell for much long-distance driving. All kinds of other research has relevance to early cattle herding. For instance, cattle herds should be larger than four head, for larger groups are more peaceful, housed as they are in bigger pens, which allows attacked animals to move away. It’s important, too, to keep cattle together with beasts they know, as a way of reducing aggressive behavior.
    Much of the behavior of range cattle during the nineteenth century and, for that matter, today seems to mirror what we know about the habits of
Bos primigenius.
A placid beast when calm, it can display aggressive and violent behavior with sudden movement or an unexpected noise. Hunting such a formidable, easily angered quarry required consummate stalking skills. However, if African game or range cattle are any guide, people moving quietly within clear sight