Branding

Yesterday afternoon, I ventured into uncharted territory. Well, uncharted at least for a born-and-raised-city-girl like me. Along with prince charming and a friend of ours, Aaron, I helped brand, vacinate and castrate about 40 calves. (We only castrated the boys.)

I'm mostly going to let the pictures speak for themselves (which they can do in abundance!). But I will give you some background. The family are very good friends of ours who live on a ranch and graciously invite us, as well as almost a dozen other college students, out every Sunday for dinner and fellowship. It is well known that anyone is welcome to come by whenever the mood strikes them and this family of 8 (including grandma), will always be happy to see, and usually feed, you. When we arrived, The Dad (Kelly), Mom (Cindi) and oldest child, a daughter named Rachel, were finishing up with the mama cows. Every year at springtime, the mama cows are run through the chute so they can get their shot of vitamins. Their part is pretty quick and relatively painless. Their babies, however, get a little more attention. The calves have all been born within the last month and a half. They need to be branded, vacinated for various diseases, and the boys need to be castrated.

This is Rachel. She is very sweet. But she also knows how to wrestle heifers. She pushed the calves down the chute into the contraption that we used to hold them down while we worked on them. She also held the front legs so they couldn't squirm too much when they were being given a shot and branded.

This is Kelly. He took a lot of kicks to his stomach cause he was working the back ends. He would hold the back legs, check if it was a boy or girl, and then castrate the boys. (I'll explain how they castrate them a little later. Guys may want to skip that part.)

This is our friend Aaron. She gave the shots and prepared the castrating tool. We kept her at the safest end so that she wouldn't get kicked. She's carrying a baby and a strong kick from a powerful back leg to the stomach did not sound like a good idea for her.



This is Prince Charming. He worked the table. We worked together to cinch the cows down with the metal bars (I worked the head bar) when Rachel would run them into the machine. Then he would heave them on their side (some of these babies were near 400 lbs!) while the rest of us worked on them. He also took over branding the last half. Since the smell of the burnt calf hair and flesh was kinda getting to me.

This is me. Like I said, I helped my prince with slamming the metal shut on the calves so they couldn't just run through, stopping for just a few minutes to snap pictures and document this process for you lovely people. I also branded the first half of the group.



This is the brand. It is hot.


These are our victims...I mean patients.

This is the table in use.



These are the concerned mama cows. The entire time we worked. there was constant concerned "moo-ing" from the mama's to their babies and the babies answering back.

Here is how things worked.

Rachel drives a contestant down the chute, towards the table.

Then, Prince and I slam our respective parts of the table shut at just the right moment to keep the calve from just running all the way through. Prince charming then pulls the calf and table to a horizontal position. Rachel and Kelly grab their feet.

Aaron administers the vaccine to the lower neck.

Kelly then checks to see if it is a boy or a girl. If it is a girl, we move straight to the branding and let her go. If it is a boy, he gets a little more "special" treatment. (Guys, this is where you might want to close your eyes and just scroll down)

To keep the boys from becoming bulls, filled with testosterone and attitude, they are castrated. Some operations simply cut off the testicles. But here is how we do it:

Kelly grabs the testicles. Rachel hands him a special tool that has a very strong, very small, rubber band on it. Using this tool, Kelly "bands" the testicles with the rubber band close to the calve's body. This cuts off the circulation. Over the next few weeks, the testicles will eventually just fall off.


Poor guy. I imagine this is the same look on the face of any guy who dared read this part.

Then the boy gets branded.

And sent off to join mama. Go free, little guy. And bask in the knowledge that you'll never have to go through that again.

If it isn't that much consolation, I understand. You've been through a lot.