Branding

Branding is not for the faint of heart. Leading up to it, "A Branding" was talked about like it was a party. Lots of people, hard work, and a big meal afterwards.....well, it wasn't too far from it.

We spent two days this last week branding. We branded calves that have been born since mid April. (there was a previous branding in early April before we arrived for the calves born in the early spring). The calves we were branding weighed approximately 150 to 400 pounds. The day

before the branding, the cowboys gathered all the pairs (moms and calves) and brought them in close to the branding corral. The morning of the branding, they were all brought into the corral at one end, and the crew was all set up at the other end.

The team for branding starts with 5 or 6 people on horseback roping the calves in the group and bringing them out to the middle of the corral. They rope the calf by the head first, then someone else comes in and ropes it by the heel. Once the calf is roped at both ends, "headed and heeled", a couple people on the ground come in and "mug". The muggers have a hard job. They have to wrestle the calf to the ground as quickly as poss

ible and retie the ropes around the calves front and back feet so they don't hurt themselves or

the ground crew. For the 400 pound calves, this wrestling match was quite the challenge.

Once the calf is on the ground, everybody works pretty fast to get the whole job done and let the calf go back to its mom as soon as possible. Other than the muggers, the ground crew also consists of someone giving vaccines, someone putting in an ear tag (that was my job-its a gun much like an ear piercing gun), someone clipping off the horn "buds", the brander, and the cutter. If everything went well, the entire process on the ground could be completed in about 90 seconds.

Branding used to be done near a fire with a hot iron, but now we use an electronic brand powered by a gas generator. Before the calves are branded we call them "slicks". Unfortunately, cattle rustlers are still a reality out here, so branding our calves to help prevent them from being stolen is necessary.

The cutter is the one castrating any of the male calves. It is an amazingly fast process if the person doing it is any good. It was a little hard to stomach the first time I saw it, but the calves don't hardly respond (if at all), and I just learned when to look away. The hard core guys (and gals) save the testicles, and roll them in flour and fry them later in the day- the call them "calvefries"- or rocky mountain oysters.

I was talking with one of the guys about it yesterday, and he said that anthropologists compare brandings to the war parties of cultures of the past. They say that the act of removing then eating the animals testicles is the ultimate expression of human domination. Hmmm.....I just think its gross.

Our first day of branding was just the people from our ranch. We branded 222 calves. We started the day at 5:00 am, and finished about 2:30 in the afternoon in 98-100 degree weather. It was so hot, and the dry powdery dust never really settled for most of the day. The second day of branding there were 6 buckaroos that came from 2 other local ranches that did all of the horseback and roping work. These guys (and girls) were really good, really fast and hardly ever missed. We branded 120 calves, starting about 5 again, and finishing by 11 am. They brought with them a lot more of the "buckaroo culture" than we usually see here. A few of them gave us a great display of rope tricks after lunch. Jose, here in the video, has actually been a world champion roper. He was really good and laughed a lot.

My mom and dad were here visiting for the weekend and were able to watch much of the branding and also the roping "show". My dad made a pretty good video of Jose's roping. I hope this video posting works....I haven't posted a video before.