BRANDING by Mary Flitner

Photo features of brandings appear in newspapers this time of year, sure as graduations and proms.  And why not?  A photographer can find a picture waiting everywhere he looks.  The faded myth of the cowboy still has fact in this setting:  neighbors helping neighbors, tables of food, handsome cowboy types with spurs and coiled lariats, little kids wearing Wranglers and big hats.  Smoke and dust rising above corral fences and cattle, beautiful girls in formfitting jeans.  That movie-land West.  

On Saturday, that’s the way it was at our place.  One more time, our friends and family rallied to help us do the ranch job we wouldn’t be able to do by ourselves:  gather, sort, rope and brand several hundred calves in a single day.

Branding Diamond-Tail Calves 2009

Beyond those photos, in Wyoming and other rangeland states there’s a reason for livestock branding.  A registered brand is a calf’s “passport”, the brand is legal proof of ownership, and cattle can be identified wherever they roam.  “Put ‘er on right,” I was taught. “She’ll wear it all her life.”  A good “one-iron” livestock brand is highly sought-after – a simple mark that requires only one tool and one quick touch of the hot iron to the hide.  A complicated brand like the Triple Triangle Single Heart Seven might look good on a gatepost, but would be useless to a cattle rancher.  Even if you could get it on straight, it would take up most of the animal’s side and be impossible to read!

Back to branding day, though.  What a relief to see vehicles arrive, bringing our team-roper pals with horses and ropes, family and reliable neighbors to vaccinate or ear-tag or fill in anywhere, high school athletes with big smiles and big muscles.  Those guys teach smaller guys, and within a few years the little guys are the big guys.  Some families have helped at our brandings through several generations. 

If you get invited to a branding, go!  You’ll be part of a pageant in a disappearing lifestyle, you’ll have fun, and we ranchers can use the help.  To put together a crew we’re competing with spring yard work, rodeos, track meets and proms.  We’re glad to see anyone who’ll put time aside to help us.  Never mind wearing the right garb or getting your picture taken.  (Leave your sandals and your dogs at home - and it never hurts to bring a cake.) 

Glamour’s not the main thing; safety is.  We’ll have several hundred milling cows and calves, horses and riders with stretched ropes pulling calves across the corral toward calf-wrestlers, people afoot using knives, hot irons, vaccine guns and needles.  Our year-after-year helpers laugh a lot and pay attention, looking out for each other. 

The rules are simple:  do what you’re told, the way you’re told to do it.     At most ranches, nobody ropes without being invited to do so, because along with skill that high prestige job requires a sixth sense about safety.  The roper needs experience with ropes, cattle and people and he needs a seasoned horse.  No rookies allowed.  Second rule, let the experts handle the branding irons.  They in turn appreciate calf-busters who hold the calf still, so the brand can go on properly.   Wrestling calves is as much about balance and position as brawn, and even the ropers take a turn calf-busting to acknowledge the importance of that dirty, tiring job.  Safety counts there, too: the guy holding the front legs should always turn loose first - letting of a calf at the wrong moment can cause a serious injury for somebody else, horseback or afoot. 

It's best to drive the cattle into the corral quietly, but last year that didn’t happen:  the cattle spilled back and we had a roaring wild event with horses, dogs and cattle galloping all directions.  I was annoyed that we so-called professionals had such a comedy show, but later I heard the kids saying, “That was the most fun of the whole day!  We all got to run our horses, some of them bucked, Jim fell off – it was just wild.  What a blast!”  Whatever.  This year, we got the cattle corralled on the first try, and the day was underway.

When the last calf is branded, I give a private nod of thanks to the Man Upstairs.  NOW for the keg of beer, tired cowboys carrying plates heaped with food,.  Now for stories and laughter.  Now for the photographs of hats just-so, spurs and chaps, little kids riding big old patient horses.  It’s all there, and it’s all true.  Thanks for coming.  See you next year?