Remuda

A Remuda is a herd of horses from which ranch hands select their mounts. The word is of Spanish derivation, for "change of horses" and is commonly used in the American West. The person in charge of the remuda is generally known as a wrangler.

Necessity

West of the Mississippi River, ranches are larger in acreage than are the farms to the east. Historically, cattle grazed, mostly unattended, on the open range before being rounded up and driven to market.

In present times in early summer, cattle are released onto U.S. Forest Service or Bureau of Land Management lands, where the rancher pays the U.S. government for a lease, often of multiple sections of land. Most public land is still open range, unfenced or minimally fenced. Cattle are still rounded up and brought in off the range in the late summer and fall, with breeding stock sorted and moved to winter pasture, and animals for sale selected for shipping to feedlots.

In both historical and modern times, the necessity of rounding up cattle from the open range is a job primarily performed by a cowboy mounted on a horse. Historically, the long-distance cattle drives required cattle to first be gathered, then herded over long distances, often requiring several weeks of travel, covering up to 30 miles (48 km) in a day to bring herds of cattle several hundred miles to a railhead for sale and shipping. Today, though cattle are usually rounded up and herded only as far as a decent road where they can be loaded onto livestock trailers or semi-trailers, the terrain as well as unpredictable behavior of cattle render motorized vehicles virtually useless for rounding up and herding. Thus, in modern times, the use of horses remains essential.