Rodeos

The MSPCA has serious concerns about rodeos because of the pain and suffering animals often experience while training for and competing in rodeo events. We are also concerned about transportation: animals are frequently kept in transit for long periods without being unloaded. The official rules of the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association allow animals to be confined during transport for up to 24 hours without food or water.

Common rodeo events

Events such as calf roping, bronc riding, and steer wrestling are gross distortions of real livestock handling. They are designed to provoke extreme behavior through harassment that is cruel and sometimes harmful.

Bull riding: Flank straps and spurs push them to buck harder.

Calf roping: Often considered the cruelest event. Calves, agitated in the chute, run at more than 25 miles per hour before being roped and jerked to a stop by the neck. Many are injured and some are killed. Ropers also need extensive practice, and calves sold to practice pens are roped repeatedly until they are injured or killed.

Bareback and saddle bronc riding: Riders hold on to a bucking horse for eight seconds. A flank strap tightened around the horse’s hindquarters makes it buck harder.

Steer wrestling: A steer is forced to run at full speed while a rider leaps from a horse, grabs its horns, and twists its neck until it falls.

Inhumane tools and techniques

To get animals to perform, rodeos rely on tools such as electric prods, metal spurs, and flank straps. Flank straps, cinched around an animal’s hindquarters, can make the animal buck beyond normal capacity, sometimes hard enough to break its legs or back. They create panicked and aggressive bucking through abdominal constriction, distress, annoyance, irritation, and torment. Electric prods are used to create fear in the animal.

Horses, bulls, steers, and calves can suffer broken ribs, backs, and legs; torn tails; punctured lungs; internal organ damage; ripped tendons and ligaments; and snapped necks. Some die from their injuries.

The public is increasingly questioning the use of animals for entertainment and often concluding this harm is against individual and societal values. These events can also endanger people: In 2024, seven bulls escaped from their pen at a rodeo in Attleboro. Fortunately, no one was hurt.

Take action

If you live in Worcester (rodeos have taken place at DCU Center) or Boston (rodeos have taken place on city hall plaza, in the Seaport, and at the Garden), contact your city councilors and ask them to ban the harmful tools used in rodeos, including electric prods and flank straps.