Unique research is being undertaken by veterinary medicine and kinesiology professors at the University of Calgary, in collaboration with the Calgary Stampede, to make the rodeo and chuckwagon competitions safer.
Speaking ahead of the 2025 Stampede, Dr. Ed Pajor, Dr. Renaud Léguillette, and Dr. Thilo Pfau outlined the research they were undertaking to detect issues in racing horses’ hearts and movement before it becomes a health issue, monitoring the Stampede’s racing and rodeo, and providing cooling for animals on hot days.
Kristina Barnes, Director of Agriculture and Western Events at the Calgary Stampede, said that while there was always an element of risk in sport, the goal was to work with researchers to make events involving animals as safe as possible.
“That’s why all of this research takes place, all of this work takes place to remove all of those elements of risk. The one thing that we agree on with the folks that would prefer the stampede not to take place is that animals are safe and animals are healthy and are enjoying what they do,” Barnes said.
To date, more than 1,800 hours had been put into preparing the rodeo grounds and chuckwagon track for the upcoming Stampede, and that the research being undertaken by UCalgary professors was in addition to the experts, independent auditors, and veterinarians who already provide input and make decisions on animal welfare.
As an example, Barnes said that the heat in the 2024 Stampede was an issue—and while veterinarians can and will disallow animals from competing if they have visible signs of distress—continued research was needed to identify what can’t be readily seen.
“We all knew it was hot at Stampede last year, you felt it as you walked down the Midway. If you were in these chutes, it was hot. What we don’t know as the Stampede is how those animals are feeling. So, to be able to put science behind that is very important,” she said.
“It was noted by the U of C researchers, it was noted by our other auditors. So moving forward, what can we do to improve that? There were questions.”
As part of the research, the Stampede didn’t want to interfere with the outcomes of the experiments, said Barnes.
“Will there come a day where we can use this? Potentially, but we need to know that that science is true. We don’t want to make snap decisions, but really want to learn more, and it’s incredible that this research that’s taking place on Stampede Park could benefit an entire industry,” she sad.
Providing cooling for animals in competitions at the Stampede
Providing shade structures, effectively, is the research topic this year for Dr. Pajor, given the issues seen last year.
“The animals at the Stampede were a little bit warmer than we would like to see. They in any type of danger, or anything like that, but we saw things like increased respiration rate in some of the bulls. We saw some of the bulls that were drooling. These are signs that the animal might be experiencing some sort of discomfort due to the heat,” Pajor said.
He said that his research team would be doing a controlled study of placing tents over some of the animal pens, and leaving a control group to compare.
While common sense might say that shade is better, Dr. Pajor said that science, rather than gut feelings, are needed because of other factors that come with adding structures.
“Well, it’s never really been tested under these types of situations. We expect animals in the shade to be cooler, but we don’t know how effective it’s actually going to be, given how the layout is here at the Stampede,” he said.
“Will the tented structures maybe prevent some of the breeze and cooling effects that may occur? So there’s a lot of questions that we’re going to be asking around temperature, and what the animal is experiencing.”
He said that there were also opportunities to think about the use of fans and ventilation, and those could be added to the experiment.
The experiment being undertaken has been approved through the University of Calgary’s Animal Care Committee, ensuring that the protocols in place meet the ethical standards required of scientific research at UCalgary.
Optimal running conditions for chuckwagon horses
Dr. Pfau said one of the complexities of the Stampede was that the infield is used for both the rodeo and for racing, and that the racing itself involves both horses and chuckwagons with different needs.
“My background is in animal locomotive biomechanics, so I’m particularly interested in how animals move, and here at the Stampede, we are particularly interested in the chuckwagon horses, because it’s such a unique discipline that you find nowhere else in the world,” Pfau said.
“So we are concentrating on measuring parameters of the track surface, how hard it is, how much give it provides, how much energy a tractor returns back to the horses. Big factors, also moisture in particular in summer, when it’s getting hot.”
He said that the heat in 2024, along with a complete lack of rain, meant that the research being undertaken showed how the track dried out and changed from the start of the Stampede until the end.
This year, that research would continue with calibrated devices to test both the track and the horses.
“The aspect that we are also very interested in is there have been parameters have been measured, what happens in horses before they develop an injury, before they fracture a leg, before they blow a tendon? We are measuring these parameters with small GPS loggers that we put on the horses,” Dr. Pfau said.
Those GPS trackers measure data 25 times every second, and provide enough precision that a single device can measure the movement of all four horses on a chuckwagon, said Dr. Pfau.
“One of the things that has been measured in thoroughbred, in flat racing, is that the horses slow down before they get injured. Now you have a chuckwagon with four horses. Three horses are pulling, one might be not so happy. So we need to find out, what are the exact parameters, and what are specific parameters that are happening when this situation occurs, so we can actually predict those injuries,” he said.
Simultaneously, more than 550 horses, including all of the outrider horses and many of the chuckwagon horses, will be fitted with electrocardiograms to measure raw data about the health of the horses’ hearts.
Dr. Léguillette said that data would be used alongside ongoing research into the troponin levels in blood samples taken from the horses during the Stampede.
Troponin is a combination of three proteins that play a role in muscle contraction, but when specific tropinin proteins are found that are used for contraction in the heart, it is an indication of damage that has occurred to that muscle.
“We’ve been doing those tests, blood tests, for three years and now we have a really good understanding, and we’ve been successful at understanding which horses could represent a higher risk versus which horses are totally fine,” said Dr. Léguillette.
He said the results of those tests are provided to drivers, who are then able to decide whether to race horses.
“Those drivers are actually, honestly, more worried than me when I come to them with some results, and they ask me more questions and they are more worried than I am, because 99 per cent of the cases are absolutely fine or a very low risk,” said Dr. Léguillette.
Helping to make better decisions for animal safety
The combined research is allowing for more information about what is a healthy level and what is not, he said.
The Stampede provides a unique testbed for research because of the large number of horses that can be included in a study, but also longitudinally because of annually returning horses.
“In horse equine studies, it’s very difficult to have a large number of animals. If you read the literature, you have basically two types of studies. You have the studies in an equine lab, where you have published six to 10 horses, and you have the field studies where it’s really hard to get 50 to 100 horses,” said Dr. Léguillette.
“We’re going to do probably 600 blood samples and 600 ECGs in 10 days. So that’s a major impact in the field, allows us to get some significance in the data, and find differences when we need to look for differences.”
That research has already helped to improve the health of horses internationally, he said.
“The Hong Kong Jockey Club is using the same troponin test now.”
The Calgary Stampede Rodeo and Evening Show kicks off on July 4.
