On a farm in Goode, a Virginia cowboy trains young bulls

By Nathan Warters

Published: August 16, 2008

GOODE — J.C. Childress confronts thousands of pounds of horned fury every day.

Muscular bulls of every shape, size and color can be found in the pasture next to his Bedford County home. They all essentially have the same temperament.

“We’ve got bulls here that are like pit bulls on steroids,” Childress said. “They just want to kill everything in sight.”

Slideshow: Raging Bulls

Childress, who breeds, feeds and dotes on a couple dozen bulls, once watched one of the animals lift a 1,600-pound bale of hay with one horn. He has seen one jump over a six-foot fence practically from a standstill. He’s nearly been killed more than once.

Yet, he remains obsessed with the animals. Other than his family, there’s nothing in this world he loves more.

“I dream about them at night,” he said.

Childress, 34, has lived an interesting life. The Big Island native is a former Marine and served a six-month tour of duty in Somalia and Bosnia. He was once a mechanic for Hall of Fame drag racer Ronnie Sox.

Ask him to reveal his identity, though, and none of that makes the top of the list. He’s a cowboy, first and foremost.

“Everything I do is cowboy,” he said.

Childress grew up in the country, and he became interested in bull riding as a teenager.

When bull riding became too time-consuming six years ago, he moved on to the breeding business.

Even though he doesn’t ride anymore, he still fulfills his passion by spending most of his free time with bulls.

“He does kind of live and dream with those bulls,” said Cecil Arthur, the owner of the 250-acre farm on which Childress and his wife, Amanda, live.

“That seems to be what he thinks about constantly.”

Childress and Arthur met about two years ago through a mutual friend, and they see a lot of each other at Kowalsky Machine Ltd., where Childress works at his day job as a sales manager and welder in the company’s race engine shop.

Kowalsky builds race motors for Arthur’s son, Walker, a successful dirt racer.

Through their interaction, Arthur became convinced of Childress’ talent as a bull breeder and caretaker.

By providing the land and a modest one-story house, Arthur, a beef farmer, allows Childress to do what he loves.

In exchange, Childress manages Arthur’s bull program. He trains Arthur’s cattle, and he shares his breeding expertise.

“I’ve always had beef cattle, and this bucking stock is new to me,” Arthur said.

“He’s more familiar with all that stuff, and he has time in the evenings to feed the bulls and has the chance then to work them and get them where you can handle them and that kind of stuff.”

Childress also has his own bull breeding program called Blue Ridge Mountain Bucking Bulls. His bulls are kept on property near Arthur’s farm.

Childress has owned some good bulls over the years, but his life’s mission is to breed a champion.

He is searching for his

golden bull.

“We’re trying to raise the next PBR bull of the year,” he said.

The PBR, or Professional Bull Riders circuit, is what the NFL is to football. The best of the best bull riders and bulls compete for money and

prestige.

Bull riders are judged by their form and endurance. Bulls are critiqued in much the same way. The animals naturally buck, another word for kicking and spinning, when a rider is on their backs. The bulls that do it the best make the big money.

The best bull Childress has owned was named Yesterday’s Wine. He was out of shape when Childress bought him in 2005, but he nursed him back to shape.

He took him to a PBR competition in Kansas City, and the animal bucked off two-time world champion Chris Shivers.

“It was on TV and everything,” said Childress, who later sold the bull. “He bucked him off in like 3.4 seconds.”

Rodeo bulls can be too aggressive for their own good. To be on the PBR tour, they have to display some sort of civility.

“It doesn’t matter how good that bull bucks. If I can’t get him in the rodeo arena and get him loaded in the chute without killing everybody around there … then he ain’t worth nothing,” Childress said.

A couple of boot scoots away from Childress’ home is a makeshift rodeo arena, constructed out of six-foot high silver and green gates.

There are a series of holding areas leading to two bucking chutes. Every bull eventually gets his time in the chute, where the real work begins.

“I’ve just got to handle him and run him through these chutes and these gates and run him up in the chutes and scratch on him and sit on him,” Childress said.

“It doesn’t make him a pet, believe me, but they get used to leaving the arena, going out of that gate, and going through gates and stuff like that, instead of just trying to run over top everything.”

‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’

The radio blasted from inside Childress’ unoccupied red pickup truck on a blazing hot July afternoon.

The songs provided an appropriate soundtrack to a typical day for Childress.

Nirvana’s hit song, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” played on the radio while J.C. and Colt, his 3-year-old son from a previous marriage, poured feed into large buckets in the back of a red wagon.

Who knows what teen spirit smells like, but this wasn’t it.

The scent of bull excrement is one of the drawbacks to Childress’ passion. He has stepped in many a pile during the last seven years. He’s had bull poo fly in his mouth.

Those are just collateral inconveniences. The physical confrontations are a different story.

He has lost count of how many times a bull has put him on his back. One of the animals recently pushed into Childress’ chest and knocked him over.

He barely avoided getting trampled, but Childress dusted himself off and kept going.

“I yelled a little bit. Might have thrown a rock or two,” he said.

Amanda Childress, who is seven months pregnant, said she doesn’t worry about J.C. when he’s out working with the bulls.

“No, I just say a prayer,” she said.

J.C. and Amanda have been married almost a year now. J.C. has a carefree charm. He really appreciates Amanda. He constantly tells her how much he loves her.

Amanda has a gung-ho

attitude, which is good, because she puts up with a lot. She’s from Buchanan, so the country life is nothing new. But even she had to get used to J.C.’s lifestyle.

She embraces it now.

She travels with J.C. to bull riding competitions. She rides cross-country with him to transport and pick up bulls. She helps feed the bulls.

“We do every single thing together,” J.C. said. “Everything.”

The couple’s house is a shrine to bulls. There’s a bull skull hanging over the fireplace, and pictures of the animals adorn the mantle and television stand.

Rodeo and bull breeding magazines litter the coffee table.

J.C.’s obsession with bulls has been passed down to Colt, who dresses just like his daddy, down to the black cowboy hat and blue jeans tucked into his tiny boots.

Colt is the one reason J.C. hasn’t moved out West to make bull breeding his career.

Childress said his mentor and friend, prominent bull breeder David Bailey, offered him a job to work on his ranch in Fort Gibson, Okla.

“To me, that was one of the biggest compliments I could ever receive, but family means quite a bit more to me than bulls, and I wasn’t going to leave my little boy here,” said Childress. “I don’t get to see him but every other weekend.”

Colt was also one of the reasons J.C. gave up bull riding. It took him away from home too much. It also resulted in some injuries. He dislocated an elbow, broke some fingers and shattered his foot.

He was unaware of the most significant injury until recently, when a trip to the chiropractor revealed scar tissue from a broken neck.

Childress knows exactly when he suffered the injury. He was riding a bull named Friday the 13th seven years ago. He fell off and landed on his head. The bull was getting ready to bowl him over when he ran for the closest opening in the gate.

He escaped just in time. He said he never felt terrible pain from the fall.

“It was like an ex-wife. Nagging,” he said.

‘Living On the Edge’

Recently, Amanda watched from afar as J.C. narrowly avoided being gored by a black bull. He was too preoccupied to pay attention to the radio, but Aerosmith’s “Living on the Edge” was appropriately playing.

He was sitting on the edge of a bucking chute, trying to get the bull situated when the animal bucked and hung its front hooves over the top of a fence trying to get out.

This is pretty standard, especially for a bull that’s never bucked before. This one is unnamed.

“I don’t want to waste a good name on a bull if it can’t buck,” Childress said.

This is the first step in determining if a bull has what it takes to be a champion. Childress puts the animals through practice sessions, rates their ability and continues the process.

If a bull shows talent, he holds on to him and works with him. If he doesn’t, he is sent away, either to auction or to the slaughterhouse.

You can’t just ride a young bull. You have to get it used to the sensation of having something on its back.

That’s where the bucking dummy comes in. A bucking dummy is a 12-pound remote control box strapped and roped to the bull.

The bucking dummy simulates the sensation of a rider on a bull’s back.

As soon as the dummy is connected, the bull tries to shake it off. It does this by jumping up and down, hind legs first. When the gate to the bucking chute opens, the bull runs out and hurls itself into a series of jumps and spins.

After six seconds, Childress presses a button on a remote that releases a hook from the dummy, dropping it off the bull’s back.

Childress can tell after a jump or two if he wants to keep working with a bull. If he does, he continues to train it, but not too frequently. He doesn’t want the animal to get too used to the process. He doesn’t want it to lose all of its recklessness.

If Childress suspects a young bull has talent, he’ll eventually take him to an event called a futurity.

Futurities are official competitions for only two-year old bulls. No riders are involved.

At these events, bulls are run out of bucking chutes with dummies on their backs. Points are awarded to the best bulls as they move from one event to the next.

“You can win big money there,” Childress said. “And when I say big money, I’m talking $100 or $150 grand.”

The best bulls move up to classics, which involve bull riders.

The best-of-the-best graduate to the PBR.

Childress doesn’t have the finances a lot of prominent bull breeders have. He sells off most of his bulls when they’re old enough to compete on a regular basis.

He makes sure to brand them with his logo before sending them off.

“To me, it’s not about the money,” Childress said. “It’s just about the pride of saying, ‘Hey, I raised that bull.’”