Spring branding

[Joe]

Spring branding is coming up pretty quick (not near fast enough) and I'd like to hear how other folks brand. I'm not looking to start a fight over who's way is better, I'm just interested in all the different methods people use. Around here most everybody heels calves and drags them to the propane burner, but it seems there are more and more outfits going to electric irons and calf tables. Most of the branding help here is family and neighbors, along with a few highschool wannabe dayworkers like me. Most of these outfits are smaller, family owned places so it's rare to brand more than 100 or so in a day. What's everyone else do? I'd love to hear any input, I enjoy hearing a different way of doing things.

 

[Silver]

Sounds like we do it the same way here. Heel and drag, teams of 2 wrestle calves. Calves are castrated at birth so we don't have to worry about that. This year I'm thinking about giving Ivomec to the calves at branding. With a good crew and if the irons stay hot enough we can pretty easily do 100 per hour. It's getting to the point where we may have to do something different as help is getting more difficult to count on. The really good hands are getting older and there are a lot less young folks to do the heavy lifting. Soapweed's method is starting to have more appeal, or a nordfork system. It's easy to find people who want to rope, not so easy to find good wrestlers these days. Fence sitters seem to be quite easy to come by however.

 

[LazyWP]

I have been to lots of different brandings. Heeling the calves and wrestling teams is still my favorite. I like Nordforks, but I don't have rubber on my horn either. The guys that have rubber don't like them real well. I have helped Soap brand, and my horses and I aren't coordinated enough to use it proficiently. I have "farmered"reached in a small pen and got the shot kicked out of me. I don't do them anymore. Tables are great if you have a small crew and don't have Healer dogs.

 

[rancherfred]

Brand them as soon as they hit the ground and are dry enough to get a good brand. Use a power inverter and a deep cycle marine battery with a small electric iron. Brand just about every day during calving season.

 

[Big Muddy rancher]

My daughter and I brand close to 400 calves by ourselves every spring.
We brand some small bunches of PB calves that we haul to different pastures to near a 100 head of commercial ones in a day. The cows all get vaccinated the same time. We use a table off our crowding tub. Calves come out the side, cows go down the alley to the squeeze.

 

[gcreekrch]

I'm tired already....................................

 

[Big Swede]

I help at least 15 friends and neighbors brand every spring. I love the chance to visit, work, joke around and enjoy a beverage or two with all the guys. The only branding I don't enjoy so much is my own, too much to worry about, but somehow we always manage to get it done.

 

[S.S.A.P.]

I help at least 15 friends and neighbors brand every spring. I love the chance to visit, work, joke around and enjoy a beverage or two with all the guys. The only branding I don't enjoy so much is my own, too much to worry about, but somehow we always manage to get it done.

We're the same as Big Swede. Calves are heeled and drug to the wrestlers. Nordforks are used sometimes. Wood fires or propane branding pots are used and most brand, castrate, give at least 2 shots, RFID tagged, dehorn at a few... get your thirst quenched then a big spread of food at the house. Its a family social event in most cases. With that said; the socializing gets shorter every year as everyone "needs to get home to get something done". We enjoy the spring branding season ~ a lot!

 

[Jake]

We run everything through a calf table. Help is hard to come by and we aren't the best cowboys so it makes it the easiest on our small crew.

 

[mrj]

We trade work with quite a few neighbors/family/friends, so can get a big crew. Calves are in a corral, cows outside and all will remain in the pasture they were gathered from after branding. So....ropers ride into the corral and rope and drag a calf outside to brand on grass. We use a wood fire, are training quite a few pretty young kids to rope, so getting big numbers done fast isn't really the focus. Calves are branded, castrated, injected, turned loose to mother up with the waiting cows. The cows either hurry to get the calf away from the area, or let the calf nurse and sleep a while a few hundred feet from the corral. They are pretty calm and appear not to be bothered much by the experience, once they mother up. We do two bunches which are about two miles apart one day, and a third pasture about 25 miles away another day. Also ride and check them a couple of times within a few days following branding to be sure all are well. They usually are. With five different families on the ranch, getting the right brand on the calf is one of the things they have to be careful about. Dinner is either on site, or about a block away. Gen. five has taken most of the cooking job, though I'm sure they would rather be able to spend all their time helping with the branding. It is a good time, because the work can get done along with the visiting and fun and there are usually a couple of breaks for food and drink besides dinner. An elderly friend from the east end of the state came to watch a few times and marveled at how the work went so smoothly and no one was giving orders. Everyone seemed to know what to do and did it well, which surprised him, given the great age differences and many families that don't work together every day. He said trading work pretty much ended when threshing ended, in his neighborhood. We have had very few accidents, behond a superficial cut or bruise, tho many years ago the kids got to riding calves, and or course, the one who's dad had told him NOT to ride any calves, 'forgot, and got his arm broken! That one was about 50 years ago. A couple of years ago, a very young boy, maybe age 7, got bucked off when his rope got under his horses' tail....and jumped up with a great big grin on his face, with no regrets. There is always a good ground crew guarding the gate to keep unbranded calves in the corral, and giving advice to those little kids, so he learned quite a few things from that incident, and is really a good little hand, participating in ranch rodeo's in the kid bronc riding.

mrj

PS, I forgot to mention we use nordforks to hold the calves because of too few wrestlers. I think we have four or six of them, so can keep things moving along pretty fast. We believe the 'forks are easier on the calves. It seems like having no human hands or scent on them relaxes the calves and they don't struggle or get as scared as when wrestled and held down by humans.

mrj

 

[Faster horses]

I always loved the social time of spring branding. In our area it has really gotten tough to get a wrestling crew. Some of the ranchers have hired kids from different FFA chapters and that's worked since the kids are pretty much ranch kids anyway. Others have gone to calf tables.

Actually some ranchers we know have considered stopping branding because of the problems finding help.
They can band the calves at birth and run them through an alley to give them their shots. I hate it that this is becoming something lost, as it was always so important to me. As far as hurrying to get done, we always figured that the two most important days in the year was branding day and shipping day....and so important to do it right.

 

[leanin' H]

Its called "neighboring" in this country and it's something I look forward to all year. Some outfits rope and drag and some have tables. But we all get together and pitch in and have a lot of fun doing it. My kids have pushed calves up alleys to tables and taken a turn on the wrestling crew. The smoothest and best brandings are the ones where everyone is assigned a task by the ranch boss. All the vaccine and tags, ect., is ready and the beer stays in the cooler til the last calf is headed back to its mother. One outfit brands, earmarks, castrates, vaccinates and dehorns just over 600 head in 4 hours. 12-15 ropers and a ground crew for every calf roped. 2 muggers, a knife man, shots and tags plus a man with the iron. They do cheat and have electric dehorners.

I did attend one branding where nobody was in charge, everybody but me was a horseback roping, the drinking started at 9 am and the corrals we were working in appeared to have been built by some 1st grade kids using popsicle sticks and chewing gum. It was a complete disaster from the jump. I stayed til it was over cause I had given my word to show up and lend a hand. Then I loaded my horse and went home. Those fools managed to brand 125 head in just a shade over 9 hours!! It was the definition of a circus and I haven't been back. Bless their hearts.

To me, its a grand way to keep a great tradition alive and teach the next generation the skills that would otherwise be lost. We rope a few on our own place. I even built a branding gizmo like Soapweed's and it works pretty well. My cousin runs all his through a table and it works great too. But we do it as family and friends and its an event I wouldn't miss. My family feels the same way. Long live neighbors helping neighbors and families teaching kids the traditions and skills that make our vocation as good as it gets.

 

[Joe]

Brand them as soon as they hit the ground and are dry enough to get a good brand. Use a power inverter and a deep cycle marine battery with a small electric iron. Brand just about every day during calving season.

Huh, I've never heard of anybody doing that. Why do you prefer doing it that way? It sounds to me like it takes all the fun out of things. Not trying to start an argument and I'm glad you do what works for you, just interested in why you do it that way.

 

[Joe]

I guess I'm not familiar with "Soapweed's gizmo" but just reading how many people use it I think he needs to patent it!

 

[rancherfred]

Brand them as soon as they hit the ground and are dry enough to get a good brand. Use a power inverter and a deep cycle marine battery with a small electric iron. Brand just about every day during calving season.

Huh, I've never heard of anybody doing that. Why do you prefer doing it that way? It sounds to me like it takes all the fun out of things. Not trying to start an argument and I'm glad you do what works for you, just interested in why you do it that way.

It isn't necessarily because I prefer doing it that way that we do it that way. We are in an area that has very few ranches that run their own cattle. We finally gave up on the big branding day because we would plan a single day and invite everyone and if nothing came up people would come. By the time we decided to quit we had to do the entire crop by ourselves one year and we didn't have any horses. We were penning them up and dragging them out by hand. It about killed us off to do that. After that year we decided we had to start becoming more self sufficient. We tried to do small groups every week or two for a couple years, but even that was too big of a job. It finally evolved to the point where I do them as they come so that I can keep caught up and we don't have to mess with them when they are older. The calves would always lay around for a couple of days, especially the steers, nursing their wounds. Now it doesn't seem to phase the calves. As soon as you let them up they go back to their mothers. It takes a lot of time to keep caught up, but the upside is not long after the last calf is born they are done being worked and they never have to be bothered again until preconditioning.

If I had my druthers I would not even brand. I have never been one that believes in tradition for the sake of tradition. It seems to me that we ought to be able to come up with a better way to identify our cattle than a hot iron brand, but until that time we are stuck doing this. Branding was never much fun for me, just a lot of work and bruises at the end of the day. Most of our help was city folks that really didn't know much about cattle other than the once or twice a year that they helped brand, so it was always a stressful day on the cattle as well.

 

[LazyWP]

I guess I'm not familiar with "Soapweed's gizmo" but just reading how many people use it I think he needs to patent it!

There aren't many guys around Soapweed that use his Gizmo!

 

[Faster horses]

I guess I'm not familiar with "Soapweed's gizmo" but just reading how many people use it I think he needs to patent it!

There aren't many guys around Soapweed that use his Gizmo!

I'm not sure he uses it anymore for various reasons. Looks like a great deal if you were set up for it.
It worked for them for a long time.

 

[Soapweed]

Last year was the first year we didn't use our "gizmo" since 2004, as my competency wasn't up to par since getting West Nile. This spring I am in considerably better shape than a year ago, even though there is still need to stand on a trailer fender to get on a horse. The Kosmo Kid is in charge now, and he is thinking about using our contraption again, even if he has to let me do all the roping. We will probably just use a calf table, though, as that worked fairly well last year.

We have had a lot of fun through the years at neighborhood brandings, but by the end of May each year the novelty has pretty much worn off. The advantage of us doing things with our own small crew is that we are much more flexible. We can pick better weather, and just not do it if the wind is howling or if it is raining. Kosmo and I trade off doing the roping and castrating, and we get plenty of roping doing about 150 to 175 calves per bunch. The gizmo maybe works better for us than for others. Our brand is a simple one-iron left hip brand that goes on easy with an electric iron. With a bigger brand or a rib location, the gizmo might not be as user-friendly. With usually just one person roping, the whole system only works as good as the roper's luck is at the time. When no calves are getting caught, no progress is occurring. Each calf has to be caught by both hind legs, or the calf can't be hoisted into the air. Even though we like our deal, the idea has never really caught on with others.

 

[Joe]

Thanks y'all for the very thorough answers. I find it very interesting to see how everybody has developed a method that works for them

 

[leanin' H]

Brand them as soon as they hit the ground and are dry enough to get a good brand. Use a power inverter and a deep cycle marine battery with a small electric iron. Brand just about every day during calving season.

Huh, I've never heard of anybody doing that. Why do you prefer doing it that way? It sounds to me like it takes all the fun out of things. Not trying to start an argument and I'm glad you do what works for you, just interested in why you do it that way.

It isn't necessarily because I prefer doing it that way that we do it that way. We are in an area that has very few ranches that run their own cattle. We finally gave up on the big branding day because we would plan a single day and invite everyone and if nothing came up people would come. By the time we decided to quit we had to do the entire crop by ourselves one year and we didn't have any horses. We were penning them up and dragging them out by hand. It about killed us off to do that. After that year we decided we had to start becoming more self sufficient. We tried to do small groups every week or two for a couple years, but even that was too big of a job. It finally evolved to the point where I do them as they come so that I can keep caught up and we don't have to mess with them when they are older. The calves would always lay around for a couple of days, especially the steers, nursing their wounds. Now it doesn't seem to phase the calves. As soon as you let them up they go back to their mothers. It takes a lot of time to keep caught up, but the upside is not long after the last calf is born they are done being worked and they never have to be bothered again until preconditioning.

If I had my druthers I would not even brand. I have never been one that believes in tradition for the sake of tradition. It seems to me that we ought to be able to come up with a better way to identify our cattle than a hot iron brand, but until that time we are stuck doing this. Branding was never much fun for me, just a lot of work and bruises at the end of the day. Most of our help was city folks that really didn't know much about cattle other than the once or twice a year that they helped brand, so it was always a stressful day on the cattle as well.

And that is why traditions get lost. :? To each their own, but its sure hard to see where a guy is headed if he forgets his past. The grand thing about ranching is we all get to do it our own way. I wish you luck in all your endeavors and respect your opinion. Even if it is wrong. :wink: :wink: (Kiddin of course)