Branding Cattle

The one drawback about closing down the old site was that all the old content (7 or 8 years of accumulated stuff) went away with it. So periodically, I'm going to put a post up that was actually a page from the other site. Just a bit of info about us (our work, projects, vacations, kids, whatever I feel like subjecting you to). There should be a record of it in the sidebar somewhere (look under vacation, or farm, or something like that. Sorta like a table of contents).

Today, we are branding cattle (well, no. Not TODAY. That's just what I'm going to show you today).

This here is what we heat the branding irons in. It's connected to a propane bottle (not in the picture). Branding is an important part of ranching. It identifies your cattle from someone else's, for one. Say a fence is down (or some idiot guy doesn't fix his fences and his cows are ALWAYS getting out and breaking into OUR pastures and mingling with OUR cows). You gotta have someway to tell them apart. You also must have cows branded in order to sell them, at least in New Mexico you do. You also can't sell cows that have a fresh brand. They must be 2-3 weeks old or so (the scab from the brand will have peeled off). This also deters rustlers from stealing cattle. Because they don't want to have to feed them and house them for 3 weeks waiting for that brand to peel off.

There are a couple of different ways to brand cattle. There is the old fashioned way (which is more work, but I think more fun). Everyone gets up at 4am. And when I say everyone, I mean your neighbors, uncles, cousins and other folks get up at 4am, saddle and load their horses in trailers, then drive them out to your place. By 5am they arrive with the horses, go way out into the pastures, find all the cattle, and herd them up to a big pen or two (usually they try to seperate the calves from the mamas). Then a one or two guys will remain on their horses and ROPE a calf, drag it away from the other cows. A couple of strong cowboys will then catch the roped calf, throw him to the ground, and the calf is swarmed by a bunch of people, each with a different job. One is castrating, one branding, one dehorning, one vaccinating, one ear tagging (varies from ranch to ranch). The next week we go help the neighbor out with his cattle. But anymore, everyone around here does it another way.

This is a branding chute. And we don't even use the horses anymore. Our cows are "trained" so that when they hear the feed truck, the come a'runnin'!! Gotta be the feed truck. You can go out there in a regular pickup and they won't even look at you. But the FEED truck (in our case, a 1986 F-250), they KNOW that sound!! We can also use a 4-wheeler to find any that wandered off (but that doesn't happen with our cows. They want that FEED!).

We also have a pretty big setup of pens by the house. A few big ones, some smaller ones, gates, chutes, runs. We can put them all in one big pen, then seperate them out (calves from mamas). All the calves are then in one pen with a narrow run that they line up single file.

Here is Jeff's dad, Don. That stick in his hand is a cattle prod. It gives the cows a little shock to get them moving thru the run and into the chute. Sometimes they get a little stubborn (think they know what's coming?)

Here is a good view of the chute. As soon as the cows head gets thru a hole in the front, we trap him/her in there and squeeze the chute shut. The cow can't go forward or backward, or lie down or anything. You can fit a pretty good sized cow in this chute. For really small calves, we have a smaller chute. It's down a different run. On this day, we didn't have any small ones.

The bars will fold down two at a time for easy access to whatever part of the body you apply your brand to. Brands are registered with the state, so you have to do it the same each time.

There is also a part near the bottom that folds down for easy access to a bull calf's "manly" areas. Because he won't be a bull no more. Nope, time for him to become a steer. We used to just use a pocket knife and cut them off. Some people save them (the testicles), take them home and fry 'em up. AKA Rocky Mountain Oysters. And to tell you the truth, I think they are pretty tasty. But, the Essary family doesn't do that. Now we use a bander. There are different kinds of banders. Some are nothing more than a small, really thick rubber band that's put around the base of them. We have a SmartBander, which is a little different than that. It's not supposed to be as traumatic on the calf and something to do with hormones. In a week or two, they just fall off.

And while the calf is in the chute, we can do other things, like dehorn, vaccinate, ear tag, put some wormer on them. We do not use horomones, though.

Oh, great. I'm caught. Hey, wait a sec! What are you doing with that hot thing!!??

OUCH!!!!

Actually, it only hurts for a second (well, I'm assuming. They don't seem to be bothered by it once you done. Having never been branded myself, I guess I really can't speak for them). This is our brand.

Then they are all turned back out to their mamas, and it's like nothing ever happend. We have such a small operation (50 head), we can easily do all our calves in a day with just two people. But sometimes it's fun to invite some friends over anyway to help. Drink some beer, tell some dirty jokes, do a little work. And be rest assured that the wife has some big meal cooked up at the house. Like a big BBQ briscut, some mashed taters or tater salad, buns, broccoli casserole, and homemade ice cream to go with some peach cobbler. Except that this wife likes to be down where the action is and doesn't quite go that far. But Jeff's mother does! The past few years with little kids underfoot I've been at the house more, but soon, they will be old enough to be down there and not be in the way.

Here's some pictures of our cows I took the other day while we were driving around the ranch.

Ha! I'm a horse. You aren't going to get near ME with those hot things!!! (actually, many ranches do brand their horses. We just choose not to)