The Branding

Saturday morning, while Stephan was at his Firefighter 1 class, I went to the MacKay Branding. It was pouring. It was about 50 degrees. The wind was howling. BUT, they were still branding cattle! The noise was the first thing I noticed. It was rock-concert loud with cows howling and calves responding. The cows were roaming in the pasture, but staying close to their calves, who were kept in two pens. The one, bigger pen was for holding all the calves, the adjecent one only held the next 20 or so. They were 'on-deck' (that's a city word, not a rancher word).

The next thing was the smell. It really did smell like someone was grilling steaks when their hair caught on fire.

This is how it worked- two guys on horseback with ropes (lasso's to us, ropes to them) rode around the smaller pen, roping the back feet of the most available calf. They dragged the calf out of the small pen, and then two young men flipped the calf over. A woman came out with a very large shot of vaccine, and a guy came over with the brand. It was a diamond, that was branded one just at the top of the other, to make a double diamond. If the calf was a bull, one of two experts came over and castrated it.

Castrated it? Here's the part that made me woozy. The castrating man would then toss (yes, toss) the nuts to two 12 year old girls standing by a truck. They would, without hardly looking up, catch the nuts, wip out a tiny pocket knife, and pop the nuts out of the sack. It was a very bloody job. The girls were covered, soaked. But, as they worked, they chatted about school things, life, being cold and hungry. At one point they took a few nuts and put them right on the branding stove to cook. I didn't partake, unfortunately, without Stephan I didn't have any nuts (there's a joke in there somewhere).

The other interesting part was the positioning of the guys who were flipping and holding the calves. I thought they were joking when they told me to cover the poop-hole... but that's what the guys did- they got on the ground, and covered that hole with one foot. It didn't stop the poop, but it kept the poop from spraying. Many of the men were covered in poop.

I have the photos up on Flickr, but some of the more graphic ones are marked as "private" for friends and family only. If you're logged in, and one of my 'friends', you can automatically see them. If you're not, log in, and ask me to be a friend. I'll say yes and then you can see the photos. If you want to.

A word of warning, they are a little graphic- if you have a very weak stomache you may want to just skip it.