Stock contractor
A stock contractor is a person or company that provides animals for rodeos. They supply bucking horses for saddle bronc and bareback riding, bucking bulls for bull riding, steers for steer wrestling and team roping, and calves for calf roping and breakaway roping.
Contractors aim to provide a uniform, easy-to-handle stock that is bred for rodeos. The animals often grow up on open range in a semi-wild state, but they are later tamed and trained to be managed from the ground, loaded into trailers, vaccinated and wormed, and placed into bucking chutes for use in the arena. Because rodeos require travel and short bursts of intense effort, most bucking horses are six or seven years old before they compete. In Australia, some stock contractors also supply brumbies used in brumby catch events.
A brief history: Early rodeo stock contracting built up around several notable figures. Raymond Knight started the Raymond Stampede in 1902 and is known as the father of Canadian rodeo, helping to create Canada’s first rodeo arena and forming a major stock contracting operation with Addison Day. The Flying U Rodeo Company, formed in the 1930s by J.C. Sorensen, is one of the oldest stock contracting outfits. In the South, the Bascom family introduced the first modern bucking chute and other innovations in the 1910s and 1920s, shaping how rodeos are run today. Reg Kesler built a large network of roughstock in the 1950s, helping rodeos across Canada and the United States. These pioneers helped make rodeo stock safer, more uniform, and better suited to modern competitions.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 01:56 (CET).