Modern Cowboy Jobs – More than Campfire Romantic

In States like Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas or California everybody knows the Western Cowboy living home on the range. But can you really still find a true western cowboy? At one time you could find real cowboys in the Wild West States but that time was over one hundred years ago. When by the 1890s railroads had expanded to cover most of the nation, long cattle drives from Texas to the railheads in Kansas were unnecessary and furthermore the invention of barbed wire allowed cattle to be confined to designated area to prevent overgrazing of the range. This was the end of the open range and large cattle drives. However, smaller cattle drives continued for more than 50 years prior to the development of the modern cattle truck as ranchers still needed to herd cattle to local railheads for transport to stockyards and packing plants. And what is left today? Is there still a need for cowboys in our modern ranching high-tech world? The answer is yes; you just need to get off the road to find the modern cowboy working on cattle ranches or other related fields. If you are still unsure if this is the right lifestyle for you, you may want to try a few days on a cattle ranch, taking long rides on horseback, sit around the fire listening to tales of Cowboys past, and get your food of the Chuck Wagon and eat in the great outdoors that Texas like the other classical western states have to offer. There are many offers of such type available on the Internet or local travel agencies. But apart from this cowboy romantic, finding real cowboy jobs is not that easy and you need to get in touch with ranchers or other people looking for workers who are able to do cowboy jobs like feeding the livestock, doing the branding, earmarking cattle, taking care of a small string of horses, performing routinely patrols of the rangeland, checking for damaged fences or evidence of prediation, detecting water problems and any other issues of concern. The modern cowboy often needs to be an all-rounder, dependent on the size of the ranch, the terrain, and the number of livestock. Only on a very large ranch with many employees, there is a chance that the cowboy is able to specialize on tasks solely related to horses (for instance horse training) or just cattle. In addition to cowboys working on ranches, there are several other job opportunities in stockyards, barrel racer, as staff or competitors at rodeos or in the cowboy trucker business.

There are no published figures on the number of working cowboys but it is estimated that there are about 10,000 workers in the US working in the field of "Support activities for animal production", as this field officially is called. But don’t expect a very good salary working as a cowboy! Following the numbers of the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics from the year 2003, you shouldn’t expect to earn much more than $20,000 per annum.

Find your Cowboy Job Now
Looking for the word "cowboy" in a so-called meta (or all-in-one) job search engine results in 1000 or even more job offers, even though many of those are only indirectly related to real cowboy jobs. One of the pages specialized in cowboy jobs is the Two-Approach Job Search Guide (2ajobguide.com), where you can search for cowboy jobs using the Indeed® Job Search Technology. Indeed was developed by Paul Forster and his partner Rony Kahan in the year 2004 and is on its way to Americas most important Job Search Engine, gaining terrain against job banks like HotJobs, Monster, Careerbuilder or America’s Job Bank. This search engine is searching in an all-in-one approach to more than 1200 engines at a time and brings you the result in seconds on your screen. With a couple of clicks of your mouse, you search the major job sites, company sites, associations, and other online job sites by keyword and location to get job listings that match the criteria you selected.

About the Author:
Oswald J. Eppers is manager of the consulting firm E&R InterConsult and founder of the Two-Approach Job Search Guide for easy and effective Job Searching and Career Assessment. Browse his cowboy job database to find 1000+ published cowboy job vacancies.