Help! Steer Afraid of People

My daughter got her new project steer(April MAB calf) a few weeks ago. He has been great at home for the most part except acts like a green calf at times, nothing surprising. He has been tied for a couple hours each day, broke to a show stick, washed, blown and clipped on. All that has been easy to do with him.
We went to their first jackpot and he loaded well (hauled with another calf) and unloaded fine too. We had to tie them up at the arena panel since we have to get their tie stalls bedded and ready. He and the other calf stood quiet. Then a teenage boy walked up near them and my daughter's calf went nuts, pulling back and rearing up and running his butt side to side. The kid stepped way back from the calves. Mind you the other calf stayed calm. I managed to approach our calf and calm him. Then he stood still again. After bedding the stalls, my daughter went to walk him the 25' and he went crazy again, getting away from her and running wild. We got him cornered and caught up and tied him for a few minutes. A friend of ours who has raised, shown and now fits calves decided she would walk him back to his tie stall for us. She got about 12' and he went crazy again, dragging her and finally cow-kicking her until he got loose again. We once again, caught him and this time left him tied for a couple hours where he was at. My daughter and I went to get him and this time I clipped a nose ring on him. I managed to get him walked to his tie stall but he acted scared to death. We tied him up next to his buddy and after a couple hours he seemed back to normal. I however did not trust him and decided to give him a little Ace so my daughter could get him bathed. He really seemed to quiet down on the Ace and my daughter got him to take to the wash rack and barely got him turned in his tie stall and a man came walking by and the steer went crazy again. So back to the tie stall and we scratched Saturday's classes. We figured by Sunday he would come around. Saturday he spent 6 hours tied standing up with his head tied high. This was after I turned him around in the tie stall and went to scratching on him and all would seem good and all of a sudden he would freak out, pull back and run in to stall cages and such. He would actually tremble. He was fine with myself, my daughter, my daughter's friend and her mom who own the buddy calf he was stalled with and most other females. Men is what seemed to set him off. I started the Steer on Calf Calm on Friday as well as another Sullivans product that came highly recommended. Nothing seemed to work. Market weigh in was Saturday night. I decided I would try Ace again but a higher dose and gave it an hour before weigh in ended. I figured I would wait until it had quieted down and be the last one to weigh in. He seems quiet and I used a buddy calf to walk to the scale. I only got to the middle of the barn aisle and he went running backwards. I got him stopped and a man walked up and the steer actually stood quiet. We put a second halter on him to try and walk him together. Well he went crazy, ran through chutes and in to other cattle. It took 4 men to get him back to tie stall and it was not pretty. Sunday we continued our scratching and turning him around to face the barn aisle but that is all we did. Then tied him up for a few hours. We asked people to approach him and any males that got within 10' he would go crazy. For safety sake we were given a dose of Thorazine to get him loaded and home. We chose to wait until a good majority of the show had cleared out. The Thorazine seemed to work way better than the Ace. We set up some panels for safety and we were able to walk him with his buddy with no problems to the show arena. Once in there, we turned our steer and his buddy loose to hang out while we loaded and cleaned up the tie stall areas. Our steer walked around calmly checking everything out. Then my daughter and her friend caught the steers and played show. The steer acted fine. We loaded up and went home with no issues.
We got him home and he acted like he always did, except he is still acting fearful of strangers, particularly men. He however is fine with my husband. We have been tying him up on our riding arena near our busy road, playing loud music and the girls ride their horses right by him at various speeds, all with no problems. I have been leading him all over and taking him for walks as well.
What can we do to get him over this fear of people? Everyone that has witnessed his behavior all agree, that he is not mean, that he acts scared to death. I don't want to drug him any more, if I knew that it would help him get over his people fear, then I might be more willing to do it for a short time. We have started him on Melatonin pills twice a day though to see if that helps. He is such a nice steer, I hate to give up on him.

Was he dethroned late?

knabe said:

Was he dethroned late?

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Do you mean de-horned late? That I don't know. He is an April calf and I see no evidence of recent de-horning.

We had a real nice chocolate colored steer once that we named Frantic for the same reason. He was fine at home but scared to death of people, noises, etc at a show. You could actually see his body shake and quiver from fear. Drugs never helped much. We took him to four shows but he never actually got shown. As he was getting groomed for the last show, he somehow stepped sideways out of one of those old heavy grooming chutes and drug it down a hill. He nearly killed himself and several men who tried to prevent that from happening. After that, dad decided it just wasn't worth it. The steer stayed on the farm after that. I think he eventually ended up in the freezer.

At our place, we play a radio non stop in the barn.The cats climb all over the place when the show cattle are tied up eating. They even walk underneath the calves and rub up against their legs. I think that helps a lot to get them used to other stimulation. A friend has chickens running all around the barnyard. I'm not a chicken fan but they seem to work wonders to calm her show cattle down. We've tied empty feed sacks from the barn rafters to get cattle used to shows that hang pennants in the show ring. We've had friends bring babies in strollers over so the cattle could be exposed to that. Expose them to lots of different situations and places to get them used to things. But sometimes, it just doesn't work out and you have to move on for safety sake.

Leave him at home.  He's going to hurt somebody.  If it's not you or your kids it'll be someone else's kid.  Some cattle are not show cattle no matter how hard we try to convince them.

I don't understand show stuff, but I like kids and I like calves.
If these projects are about learning then I wonder why more people don't have the kids work with the calf from day one. Just raise one and show it instead of spending a lot of money on buying one that turns out to be better suited to being out on pasture. I kind of admire this calf for refusing to cooperate.
Not criticize,  just thinking about how much pressure these situations put on the kids to justify the expense of the calf.

To justify why some people spend a lot of money on show calves. I know that most people spend a lot of money on calves to promote there breeding program. It may not be there calf that wins but they are noticed when they win. It's a win win situation because the breeder of the animal gets noticed and the owner gets noticed. For the neighborhood showman that drops 40k on a steer is beyond me. And I can't really understand spending that money on a steer even if you did have your own program ( unless you sell it for 200k at ft. Worth)
But to the crazy calf situation sometimes there is nothing you can do I may not jackpot show it for a while and find some small open shows that it could work it's way into the big ones. That is still a risk going to small shows. The more people that handle the calf the better, but sometimes the good ones are the crazy ones.

We have been playing the radio, we have chickens that run around his feet and noises don't bother him. We have a boatload of dogs and when my daughter washes him, the dogs are all under foot playing in the water. The steer could care less. He can be tied up and horses and riders are galloping by him within a few feet and he just stands there. However, when strange people (namely men) approach him, his eyes go wide and he will even tremble. Once they can get their hands on him and start scratching him, he will finally quiet down, but it takes a bit for them to be able to get close enough to do that. I just can't help but think that there would be a way to get this calf over his fear.

Showing cattle is my thing. I loved it when I was a kid, so I got my kids involved in it. But my husband is strictly a commercial cattleman. He has about a hundred head of cows. He has a cow calf operation. We had a show heifer 1 year who didn't care much for men. That was mostly my mistake because she was never around men much at home. She never really got over it but since then, I make my husband make as many appearances in the show barn as possible. My point is, if the steer is afraid of men, then expose him to more men and see if that helps. It is possible that he was mistreated by a male and he remembers that. He might get better and he may not.

contrast these two videos.  I know they are horses and people say it doesn't translate, but they are wrong.

Dangerous Horses - Foolish Horse People - Ignorant Horse Trainers - Horse Sport Abuses

Horse Training - Cure Aggressive Horse Behavior with Mike Hughes

The best heifer we ever showed wasn't exactly crazy, but she wasn't exactly tame either, but she was one heck of a heifer! She won most any show she went to, but we had to learn how to handle her. No one wearing a hat (baseball hat, cowboy hat, stocking hat) could be around her. the person showing her could not wear a shiny belt buckle. She did not like the show rings with lots of lights or  penants hanging in them. She did not like a lot of noise. sometimes we put cotton down in her ears. She did not like other people to touch her. She was more of a moody annoyance, then she was dangerous, so we put up with her. We showed a lot of her daughters and granddaughters. Every one of them was a little bit like that, but none of them were quite as bad as she was.

I cringed watching the first video Knabe. There are way more stupid horse "Trainers" than there are good ones IMO. The second video was good and has the idea that moving the horse and releasing pressure gets them to hook on to you. Since I have been training horses for many years I can relate to those videos on what not and what to do.
But I don't think I can apply that "driving" method to a steer?? I have applied "release of pressure" to him though. Maybe you could explain your point more to me (why you showed two horse videos).

You are not driving the horse or heifer or whatever.


You are creating an opening to come to


Think of tension on the lead as the "driving"  and the release by the animal as the horse turning towards you and relaxing.  Notice the best moments in the good video are when he doesn't throw his rope, the horse relaxes and takes a crap, he licks his lips, his head lowers a little, his neck has a relaxed arc to it instead of being upside down, his . Two of the most pivotal moments in the video is when he first enters and throws the rope and when you can feel the horse is trying to fill the gap, but has to turn a way one last time to verify if he is going to be consistent and reward good behavior and discourage bad behavior.


It's really quite simple. Just ask for release and wait for a lean at first, then over release. Repeat over and over, till you get a foot. Learn how to get a release of the front foot moving toward you rater than just the back feet moving to turn towards you. Find the resistance point, back and fix it before forcing them to do it by dragging, , pushing or some other lack of understanding technique.


At some point, you should be able to kneel down and have their nose on the ground as they walk around you. Do all of this on both sides so they have to use both eyes.


When you get good, you will feel any discomfort welling up inside  the animal.  Just ask them to do something which at times could be simply to look at you or just anything silly like stand there while you scratch a favorite spot like between the front legs, behind the poll, to the side of their trailhead, just inside their rear legs. Im not a fan of sawing with a show stick.  In my day we had nails on them. I would just turn it side ways and scratch if I wanted.  I'd almost say someone should design a show stick with some stiff bristles on the side at the end.

Yes, Knabe, I apply all those same principles to my horses and do use it on our steers to a point. I put pressure on until acceptance and then release pressure immediately. I try to make the wrong reaction difficult and the right reaction easy for them. Horses learn from release to "pressure" and I believe cattle and a lot of other animals learn from this as well. This steer is pretty much becoming a teddy bear here at home. He loves his daily routine and as of yesterday, met my daughter at his gate to be caught. We know his favorite scratch places and he chomp his mouth and lower his head to the dirt as we scratch those favorite places.
What I need to do is enlist the help of a lot of "strangers" to come approach him and scratch him. This is where the issues are. Its just hard teaching other people to stop or release the pressure when they approach him so he learns to not be afraid.

By the way, Sullivans makes a show stick attachment that has a plastic brush of sorts that slips on the end of the stick. You can use the prong side to set up and the brush side to scratch 

From what you have described it seems that the combination of new surroundings and commotion coupled with strangers leads to sensory overload for this steer.  When he panics and runs, all he feels is pain from his halter and a nose bug.  That reinforces that he doesn't want to be there, and he is looking to go anywhere as fast as he can.  All training goes out the window and he is just looking to get away from what scares him, which is everything.

I think your approach to bring strangers to his home so he can meet them on his turf might be the key to slowing him down.  Once he gets over that, then maybe let the trailer be the safe place to introduce strangers, then progress to a show where he stays tied to the outside of the trailer and is introduced to strangers.

His disposition is his genetics.  Good luck!

It is underestimated the effect having lots of different people around reinforcing good things happening to them.  cattle understand the concept of strangers. it's a defense mechanism.

The fact that this steer handles well at home makes me think that there is a good chance he can be brought around and be shown.  He just needs to be gradually worked into it with good experiences at each progression.

WYO thats a good idea, did not think about the whole progression. I like the introducing the strangers even in the trailer. We have an opportunity to take him to a 4H cattle meeting this Saturday. I think we may take him and just tie him up at the trailer. See how he handles that. Then Monday I have a horse group meeting at my house and I plan to tie him up and ask various parents and kids to approach him and scratch him with the broom or show stick.
As far as breeding, I am told that MAB offspring tend to be gentle. He is out of a Shorthorn cow. I also thought Shorthorns were quiet. Maybe I am wrong on this. We just bought another MAB as a back up calf that we feel we can push for an earlier fair or replace the one we are having problems with. Hopefully this one is as quiet as I am told her is.

I admire your determination but no calf is worth someone getting hurt.I have been around for a long time and have seen many different behavior patterns in cattle and have been able to remedy some but many just aren't destined to be in the spot light.I just sent two excellent calves to the feedlot where they will be fine just wrong attitude to sell to anyone.It seems as though genetics and maternal side can make a big difference.Tranqulizers help but don't fix the problem.Cattle are creatures of habit and will do the same thing over and over.I have seen calves blow up and never do it again but there seems to be a pattern with your steer.Good Luck just don't have the answer.