Dr. Melvin Bradley’s Contributions to Making the Mule Missouri’s State Animal

From the November 2025 issue

Dr. Bradley’s knowledge and expertise provided extensive background on the Missouri mule, helping tremendously in the task of getting HB 84 passed. What Dr. Bradley shared during the two committee hearings alone could fill a book. (In fact, he is the author of several books so I guess that is unequivocally true). 

It’s unlikely that those who love mules don’t already know about Dr. Bradley, but in case you don’t, I wanted to highlight him and include what we have recorded of his words when he testified. 

“Growing up in the 1920s and 30s on a 1,200-acre Osage River bottom-hand farm in Miller County, Mo., Melvin had daily contact with mules,” reads Dick Lee, MU Agricultural Editor Emeritus’s introduction in The Missouri Mule: His Origin and Times. “All of the crop work on the Bradley farm was done with horses and mules. Melvin’s father wouldn’t consider owning a tractor and, as a result, there was always plenty of horse and mule power on hand---including stud horses and jacks.”

Even in the military, he was able to continue a close relationship with equine. As a member of the armed services, he trained with one of the last horse cavalry units in the U.S. Army. 

Once his military duties were completed, he married his wife, Gloria, and attended the University of Missouri-Columbia, earning degrees in Agriculture and Animal Husbandry. He earned a PhD from Oklahoma State University in Stillwater while alongside his graduate study. When he returned to the MU, he taught in one capacity or another for 20 years until his retirement in 1985.  

“He shared his knowledge with all, and he is particularly proud of his work as chairman of the U.S. Department of Agriculture 4-H Horse Publications Committee. That leadership effort resulted in a series of 40 or so horse teaching and learning packages consisting of color slides, scripts, leader guides and student lessons distributed nationally by the National 4-H Council. More than two million pieces of this 4-H horse literature have been distributed. He was author or co-author of more than 30 MU Science and Technology guides concerned with buying, feeding, training, and riding horses.” 

He authored a textbook in 1981 (Horses: A Practical and Scientific Approach) and offered advice to authors, filmmakers and event planners. 

But he was best known as an authority on the Missouri mule, earned in part by his work on the Missouri Mule History Project which sought to document the history of the Missouri mule. The Missouri Mule Skinners Society was formed in 1982 to raise funds for the project, and his work conducting interviews, public speaking, writing, editing, and extensive research with the project helped to raise almost $35,000 to promote research and preserve mule history. 

Dr. Bradley completed three original publications (The Missouri Mule: His Origin and Times; Mules: Missouri’s Long-eared Miners; and Recollections of Missouri Mules) and three reprinted publications (including a revision of Jack Stock and Mules in Missouri). 

“Dr. Bradley or Doc, as he has always been called by members of this family, was the reason behind my owning Mules and More magazine,” said Sue Cole in her memorial to him in our May 2003 issue. “Twelve years ago the previous owner of the magazine, Rosetta Baugh of Carthage, Mo., called Dr. Bradley wanting to know who she could sell the magazine to that would continue to support the magazine and mules. His reply was, ‘Call Sue Cole, her boys are grown, she has mules and needs something to do.’ ...and the rest is history.”

In the 1995 House committee hearing, after Dr. Bradley explained that Missouri has the greatest mule heritage in the world, he discussed how Missouri was first in mule quality and at the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis, Mo., owned 38% of the draft mules.

When the House committee was asking their questions, they wanted to know where mules originated. They didn’t just want to know how they got to the United States, they wanted to know how they began. Dr. Bradley indicated that they think that mules originated in Turkey. The mule is mentioned in the Bible in Genesis - so it’s been around for quite a while. 

During the Senate committee hearing, Dr. Bradley gave a short history of the mule. He talked about what mules looked like when they came to this country - that they were smaller than they are today. He explained how the Missouri mule looks different than that original animal. 

Dr. Bradley also talked about the mules’ numerous contributions in war. He recalled how, when he was young, you could get more for a mule colt than you could for a calf. He explained how mules were used in the wagon trains and helped in the expansion of the US Territory. 

 “With all the mules did for us, it would be doing an injustice by not making them the state animal,” said Dr. Bradley. 

Dr. Bradley’s influence reaches far beyond the classroom, the committee room, or the pages of his books. His lifelong dedication to the Missouri mule helped ensure that its story, and its place in our state’s history, would never be forgotten. Each time someone takes pride in Missouri’s official state animal, they’re honoring a legacy that Dr. Bradley helped to shape and preserve.

Dr. Bradley driving the University of Missouri School of Veterinary Medicine Mascot Mule team with Dean Robert Kahrs in the seat next to him. Photo by Don Radke, from the May 2003 issue of Mules and More