Ultimate Bull Riding Battle serves up an appetizer bigger than Rocky Mountain Oysters

IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI)- The annual Ultimate Bull Riding Battle returns for its sixth year at Sandy Downs.

Before the main event hits with the cowboys hanging on to get their 8 seconds of glory, the competition served up an appetizer bigger than Rocky Mountain Oysters.

Bulls who are too young and not quite ready for a rider yet got their chance in what may become their arena. They wore what the breeders and cowboys who raise them call a dummy that acts as a weight to help train them for the arena's bright lights.

"It has a timer and they buck for 4 to 5 seconds and they come off and the judges score the bulls. And so what we're doing is we're training our bulls to be calm and we want to see how they perform and see if they're going to make the next step to getting a rider on him. And it's important to get him to train and get him to advance because it calms down and then it's safer for bull riders in the future because they've been in the chutes they've been working in before. And they kinda know what the event is about for a bull," said Jimmy Young of Bovico Bulls.

Young says that similar to dogs that are bred for certain tasks, so too are these bulls bred to be in the bright lights of a rodeo arena and buck. Just like the dogs who want to work so too can the ranchers tell if the Bulls want to buck or not.

"We breed them to buck. So they either do it or they don't. We just teach them to calm down. So some of them jump out, and you want them to spin and kick. And that's what they're all going to be doing tonight, for the most part. Others probably won't make it to a rider because they you know, we're we're trying them out right now and they're just probably not going to make the cut with a rider," Young said.

The point of the breeding before the event was to see how the bulls were progressing.

"We're hoping they're going to perform like we did at home because but the problem is you're going to your new place. It's a new atmosphere. There's a lot more people here. And so they don't sometimes do what they do at home. And that's okay because sometimes we'll come. We have about 8 to 10 events a year total that we take them to, and sometimes they can only go to three or four events because we just feel like they're not ready for these events yet," said Young.

Many of the bulls that end up bucking in the Ultimate Bull Riding Battle may end up going into the Rodeo Finals in Vegas.

Doors for the Ultimate Bull Riding Battle Open at 5 and the event starts at 7.30 p.m.