10/10/2024
2024 Judge Jeff Derby
Jeff Derby will be coming from Spain to judge in our 11st Skills!
Jeff has been a necessary and important contributor to the operation of the Skills since its beginning in 2013. Always one of the first to arrive and the last to leave, he has managed the calves on their arrival and stayed to see them loaded and taken away. He has helped set up and tear down every event.
In 2014 Jeff’s team placed 1st in Open Reata Calf Branding. 2015 he was on the 3rd place Open Reata Calf Branding team, placed 2nd in Open 2-Rein Stock Horse, his Pro-Am sorting and Pro-Am Branding teams placed 1st, 11th on Mixed/Ladies Sort & Rope team, and 6th Mixed/Ladies Sorting team. In 2016 Jeff was awarded Top Hand, he placed 3rd Open Ranch Horse Hackamore and 8th Open Doctoring team. 2017 Jeff was 4th Open Ranch Horse Hackamore and 4th Open Ranch Horse two-Rein. 2019 he placed 3rd Open Ranch Horse 2-Rein. Jeff judged the 2021 Skills, was one of our Pros in 2022 and judged again in 2023.
Jeff is a lifelong student of horsemanship. His involvement with horses began at an early age on his grandfather’s cattle farm in rural Ohio. Horses have been an enormous part of his life ever since. Many of Jeff’s first jobs away from home were cleaning stalls and doing chores at local horse facilities, often in return for a chance to work with and learn from the resident trainer. As a teenager Jeff began taking in outside horses to start himself. He attended university to further his formal education in horses, beef production and agriculture in general. It was while at college he began competing in rodeo rough stock events. He was a four-year member of a very successful inter-collegiate rodeo team and began competing on the semi-pro circuits. Jeff obtained a bachelor’s degree in Animal Science while continuing to take in outside horses for training and holding down various cattle working jobs in order to pay his way through school.
After college Jeff focused on riding bulls, making his living for the next half dozen years by competing on the Pro Rodeo circuit. Even then, he continued to ride horses for the public during the less busy times of the rodeo season. With the birth of his first child, Jeff quit the rodeo circuit in order to be at home more and went back to riding horses full time. He began taking cowboying jobs that afforded him the opportunity to both work horseback every day and to be around people more knowledgeable and skillful than himself. He moved around, working jobs throughout the US, always in an effort to be around better and better horsemanship. He travelled aboard several times to observe and learn how horses were used in other countries and cultures. For nearly two decades Jeff held jobs on ranches, managing horse programs, contract colt-starting, or holding a spot on the cowboy crew, always trying to further his understanding of and abilities with horses and using them to handle livestock. The majority of this time was spent starting colts or rehabbing “problem horses”. Jeff would get these horses going, prepare them for cattle working jobs, and then hand them off; either to the ranch cowboy crew, a professional trainer with the intention of competing on them, or a recreational owner wanting to enjoy using them perhaps on a neighbor’s ranch or maybe in town at a local competition or roping event.
Consistently through-out his career Jeff has searched for ways to get along better with horses. He has sought ways to better be able to elicit the responses and performance he desired from the horse with less trouble for the horse. His search led him on a path of working more and more with the animals’ natural tendencies, (talking them into the desired result), and less and less from trying to force or physically manipulate them. This led Jeff to explore approaches to horsemanship that value the horse as an equal partner in the relationship. While open to learning from many different disciplines and areas of horsemanship and values what works well at getting along with the horse, he was always drawn to the cattle working aspect of cowboying and ranching. He appreciates the functionality and the truth that goes with needing to influence a separate living being.
Jeff has been riding horses in the hackamore and interested in bridle horses since his teenage years. It has been the past half dozen or so years that he has focused nearly solely on the Californio Vaquero style of bridle horses. This is due largely to meeting and working with Bruce Sandifer. Much of what he first heard Bruce say resonated with Jeff so he made opportunities for himself to learn more about this style.
Once riding with and while working and partnering with Bruce, Jeff saw in Bruce some of the very best examples of ideas he had heard of for so long: about making it easy for the horse, working from where the horse is, adjusting ourselves to fit what the horse needs, and respecting the horse for just what it is. In Bruce’s approach Jeff saw what he feels is truly working with the nature of a horse. Bruce and Jeff are quick to point out, none of this approach is new, it’s an old way just newly being reapplied.
The Californio Vaquero style appeals to Jeff for its combination of artistic beauty from the classical horsemanship background, the high value placed on the horse and its well-being, and the functionality needed for working wild cattle in extremely rugged terrain.
Being a lifelong student comes from a joy for learning and with that comes a passion for teaching. Jeff enjoys sharing what he has learned. Jeff and his wife Carolin train horses and teach at their ranch in Arizona. Jeff partners with Bruce Sandifer in workshops from California to Canada, and from Colorado to New Mexico and Arizona. Jeff has brought his knowledge and skill of this signal/balance system to Switzerland and has traveled with Bruce to Italy and England. Jeff is moving to Spain with his family and where he plans to share his knowledge of the Vaquero style he and Bruce have refined. Jeff will say that “knowing that he has helped somebody else get on to something good for themselves and their horses is about as rewarding as it gets”.
Because of his ability to articulate and demonstrate the California system, Jeff became a sought after speaker and presented at 2013’s the Santa Ynez Valley Historical Museum Vaquero Show and in 2014 and 2018 the Vaquero Heritage Days. April 2024 Jeff will be inducted into the College Rodeo Hall of Fame. We are fortunate to be able to count on, once again, his knowledge and skill for our event.
