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Once the bulls are weaned they are introduced to more and more human presence, first by being fed by hand, dumping their feed from a bucket into the trough, then by enclosing them in smaller spaces. That cow is the meanest mom out there, so there’s a limit to how much presence you can have out there.” “These cattle are wild, so any time you are around cattle, they are constantly watching you, so there’s an escalated mind set. “We will start to influence their life by just being a presence,” he said. The training, Ward said, is less about bucking - “They’re either gonna buck or they’re not,” he said - but about acclimating them to human contact and to working in the pens and chutes. What really is a big target for me is like a running back - he has some muscle mass, he’s not the biggest player on the field, but the most athletic.” “We don’t target for great big calves like we do for beef cattle that would be like finding an offensive lineman. “It’s kind of like looking for a great football player,” he said. Just as important, Ward said, is finding athleticism in a bull. “We want to know, does she have good bone structure that she can have that calf, and good mothering and milking ability to raise that bull to be a big bull at weaning time,” he said.

“We’re wanting to create a bull that jumps high and then kicks, and at the apex (of the jump) changes direction, so you have that turning motion,” he said. Ward said Invizibull Fire’s abilities come almost entirely from his genetic makeup. Instead, he’ll compete against other young bulls in a competition called “dummy bucking.”

Ward will bring a 2 year old named 52 Invizibull Fire to the Buckers Unlimited Finals in Sterling Saturday, but because of his age, he won’t be ridden. “We raise beef cattle, and when I was still riding this looked like it would be interesting.” “Breeding is something that inspired me,” he said. He competed as a bull rider when he was younger and, as his riding career came to a close, began to look at breeding and raising bulls as a way to stay connected to thing he had come to love.

Mike Ward has been producing bucking bulls on his L4 Livestock ranch near North Platte, Neb., since 2001, and he’s been around livestock and rodeo most of his life.

Breeding and raising a prize-winning bucking bull is like creating any other great animal - it begins with genetics.