It's Branding Time!

Look how young and innocent we were

I walked in the house around supper time and gave Kerry a smooch on the cheek.

“How was your day?” I asked while peeking over her shoulder at the pot of potato soup she was stirring. My wife makes a mean potato soup. Pair it with fresh bread hot from the oven and I am in heaven. She turned her head to give me a smooch back.

“It was good. I wrote a grant for… Oh my God you stink!”

Now, you might think such a callous remark would hurt my feelings or at least take me by surprise, but you would be wrong. Such statements are part of everyday conversation in my house.

“You must have hot-fit a bunch of horses today.” She said with a smile while gently pushing me back out of range of her nose.

“Yeah, I haven’t drawn that many clips and rolled that many toes in a long time.”

“Well go downstairs and throw your work clothes in the washer and take a shower. I can hold the soup.” I gave her a bear hug in gratitude which was received with ungracious protests. It was something about transferring my stink to her pristine, flower scented clothing.

The shower was in the basement of the house on the ranch and was perfect for those days when I smelled of burnt foot or anything else odiferous. Burned horse hoof smells like burnt hair which makes sense because the outer layer of horse feet is mostly made up of a protein called keratin which is the same protein in your hair.

(For God’s sake do not put hot steel on your hair. Our lawyer insisted I say that.)

You may be asking why I would put hot shoes on a horse’s foot. Excellent question. Hot fitting horseshoes does a couple things for a farrier. One, looking at the burn pattern gives a quick assessment of how level the ground surface of a foot is. High spots are black while low spots are not. Two, when you draw triangular clips to help hold shoes on the foot, the hot clip burns a little seat on the edge of a foot for a tight fit. Finally, fitting a shoe hot makes reheating the shoe for any adjustments fast as opposed to the time it takes to heat up a cooled off shoe and in horseshoeing, time is money. It doesn’t hurt the horse if you are doing it right but during the process smoke rises and it doesn’t smell good. It seeped into my clothes and hair much to my loving bride’s consternation. Although, truth be told? She didn’t complain about the smell when I was shoeing HER horse. Make of that what you will. I did try to tell Kerry once that it was the smell of money, but she didn’t buy it.

Something else smells just like burnt horse hoof—branding. Branding the calves that were born during the winter is a rite of spring in ranching country. Kerry and I were fortunate that we were invited to help our friend Butch and his family brand their calves when we were still new to the area. It was a major production that would have done Cecil B. DeMille proud with a cast of thousands (OK not thousands but there were a lot) set against the dramatic snowcapped Crazy Mountains.

The plan was to brand at three different places in one day. That would be over 350 calves! There would be snacks and water during the day and a big BBQ dinner at Butch’s son’s place when we finished up. Everyone called him Shorty, which was funny because he was tall like his dad. Shorty wanted to start on our place, the one with the blue trailer, remember? Riders would show up at 7:00 am to head out and gather the cattle while the rest of us set up a temporary steel panel corral.

The Blue Trailer where so many adventures began

Branding day dawned clear. Off in the distance to the east there was an impressive line of trucks and horse trailers heading our way just before 7:00 that morning leaving a tan-colored dust column in their wake. You could hear the rattling of the trailers almost before you could see them. As they parked in a long row on the ranch road, the horses were whinnying to each other. An occasional loud bang added to the cacophony as an impatient horse kicked the side of its trailer.

Soon there were around twenty horses tied up to their trailers as their riders saddled and bridled them. I thought it funny the men were speaking in low tones to not disturb us as if we couldn’t hear all the racket. Our boys, who were six and four years old, were fascinated by the cowboys and their horses.

“Are they going to round up the cows?” Jack, the oldest, asked me.

“Yes sir.”

“Is Butch going to come?” This from Michael, the youngest, never taking his eyes off the riders.

“Sure, he is.”

“Oh good.” The boy said with relief in his voice. Mike liked Butch and maybe he thought we were doing all this to Butch’s cows without permission? Maybe he thought we weren’t competent enough to do it without Butch? I wasn’t sure, but to survive as a parent you must know when to and when not to ask questions!

Shorty arrived with a trailer that had steel panels hanging off the sides. I went down to find out our assignments. He conferred with his riders and told them where to go look for the herd of girls. While he saddled his horse, he asked me to drive his rig up to where they had decided to set up the corral. Kerry was to oversee filling of syringes to vaccinate the calves.

“Dad says she is a scientist by education and will understand what all those stupid numbers on the syringe barrel means,” he said with a laugh.

“Oh, she will take charge for sure.”

“I’ll count on it then,” he replied and kicked his horse up into a trot to go find the cows.

I ran up to the house and gave Kerry her job, then drove Shorty’s rig out to the branding pasture. I found a group of older guys who were waiting for me. In the trailer we found steel fence posts and several post pounders. Some guys grabbed the panels while others pounded posts in. We used wire to lash the panels to the posts and made a big C shaped corral with an open end. I knew a couple of the ranchers who explained how it was going to work. We would drive the herd into the corral. Then we would arm ourselves with some fiberglass cow sticks and cut the cows out leaving the calves in. Usually, you leave a few older babysitter cows in to keep the calves calmer. Once everyone was captured, we would set up a card table for tags and vaccinations and get the fire going to heat up the branding irons. In the old days they would build a wood fire but it’s hard to keep the steel hot enough for a good brand. Now they use a propane forge designed to hold however many irons you need. It runs off a propane bottle just like your gas grill so it’s portable and you don’t have to worry about starting a wildfire by accident.

Kerry pulled up in our truck along with several other ladies. I could see a bunch of kids in the trucks craning their necks to get a good view of the corral. This was going to be a show, and they didn’t want to miss it. Off in the distance came some mooing that got louder by the minute. It was interesting to watch as ribbons of cows came from several directions to meet in the hay fields forming a long line being pushed from behind and flanked by mounted cowboys.

We all backed away and let the cows enter the corral. I wondered at first if we made it big enough, but they managed to pack themselves in. Now we started separating.

It’s easy at first because the cows want out and push their way to the front while the calves crowd in the back. In fifteen minutes, we had most of the cows out.

It’s hard to describe the noise of branding. First you have the roar of the gas forge. Then the cows are bellowing while the calves bawl back at them. There is some barking by herding dogs, adding to the yelling and whistles from the men working the cattle. Near the entrance to the corral, the boss would get all the wrestling teams and ropers lined out.

Yes, I said wrestling teams. I was on one of them. The two wrestlers who make up the team meet a roper dragging a calf clear of the corral by one or both hind legs. One of the wrestlers grab a tail or leg while the other grabs the rope in one hand while hopefully grabbing a front leg with the other. The goal is to flip the calf so its left side is up. It’s a matter of timing so that both of you flip your end of the calf in one motion. Once they are down, the roper stops his horse but keeps the rope taut. The guy in back pulls the top leg towards himself while flopping on the ground and using his foot to push the calf’s bottom leg away locking up the hinds. The ropers loosen the rope and that man takes the lasso off the calf so the roper can get another one. The guy in front folds the calf’s top leg all the way up and pushes down firmly to hold the calf in place. As soon as the wrestlers have it secure, another team moves in to brand, vaccinate, insert ear tags and castrate the bulls.

It all happens in the blink of an eye when things go well. Of course, some calves are well over 100 lbs. and keeping them still can be a struggle. You always have rookies who need to learn the routine so they can slow things down a little, but with a big crew you can make up the time difference on the learning curve. Besides, it’s fun to watch kids learn how to rope and give them a smaller calf to figure out how to wrestle. There is lots of good-natured teasing, cheering, and coaching. One point that was made repeatedly was for people to make sure who is the calf and who is human when it comes to tagging vaccinating or especially castrating!

Remember when I talked about the smoke from fitting hot shoes is smelly? Well, when you brand three or four calves at the same time the smoke gets a little thick. The good news is that everyone smells like burnt hair so there are no complaints!

Every once in a while, a cow tries to come back to the corral to look for her calf. The herding dogs have a marvelous time chasing them away. As wrestlers, we always try to aim the calf away from the corral when we let them go. There is always one odd ball who has to spin around and run the wrong way and go back with the other calves. I watched one of the good ropers find that calf and throw a loose loop over its neck and then use his horse and rope to guide him out of the corral and release him far away near all the gathered cows who were anxiously waiting for us to finish. I always admire that kind of horsemanship and rope handling. Nothing rough. Just smooth and easy which always makes cow work better.

It only took a couple hours, including rounding cattle up, to brand the 100 or so calves . Then we tore everything down, packed it up, and drove to the next place to do it over again.

At the end of the day, we branded over 350 head at three different ranches which included branding a Longhorn steer at Shorty’s. I never got a good answer as to why Shorty had a Longhorn. They are a pain in the neck with non-longhorn cattle, especially on the hay line in winter. They swing those big horns back and forth keeping the usual Angus and Hereford cattle away from their food. They also are more cantankerous than the Angus we normally work with. Shorty and a few friends went down into a brushy area to rope that steer and it was fun to watch. One guy caught its head while another roped both hind legs and they stretched him out until he toppled over. Someone ran down with a hot iron, tag and syringes and that was it. The steer was the one animal we had been looking for all day. The last one.

Inside Shorty’s garage they had set up a BBQ feast. Kerry was chatting with the ladies and keeping an eye on the kids, so I sat next to one of the guys whose job was to give injections and castrate. He was fun to talk to because he reminded me of the actor Ben Johnson. His name was Jim.

“No disrespect,” he said, “but you seemed to know what you were doing out there today. Aren’t you from Connecticut or some such place back east?”

“Yes sir, that’s right. Torrington, Connecticut”

Now I was playing with Jim a little. He didn’t know, just like most people there, that I had a secret when it came to branding.

The man laughed.

“OK then, how do you know so much about branding?”

“Well, I have a friend down in Moorcroft and he took me to a branding last year, so I learned some of the ropes.”

“Moorcroft Wyoming?”

“Yes sir.”

“What is his name?”

“Voy Cox.”

“I’ll be danged.” Jim exclaimed pushing his black Resistol cowboy hat back on his head. “I know Voy real well. I had a saddlery in Moorcroft before I moved here. I’ve got a shop in Greycliff. Are you a shoer?”

“Sure am. Voy apprenticed with us in Connecticut.”

I got up and got a couple of beers for Jim and I. He was a great storyteller. We talked about what a small world it is and solved all major world problems in less than an hour. Here is the kicker. I ended up meeting my friend Larry through Jim. Larry of course became a mentor and hunting partner. You can read all about him in my three-part series called The Box. At the bottom of each piece there is an arrow pointing right that says NEXT. You hit that to read the next part of the series.

https://johnjoconnell.substack.com/p/the-box

It had been a long but fun day. We were all beat but I took the long way home so we could check out all the calves with their new brands. The ones we could see were either asleep or sucking off their moms which was good. The boys were fast asleep in the backseat missing out on the spectacular sunset behind the Crazies. Kerry had closed her eyes, and I thought she had drifted off as well.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” she murmured.

“What is?”

“It took smelling like burnt hair but, for the first time, I feel like we’re part of the ranching community.”

“So, you stink?” I grinned.

Her eyes opened and she smiled. “Heck no. I still smell like flowers. You are the only one who stinks, but you know what I mean?”

She glanced outside the window at a newly branded calf mouthing and playing with a string of barb wire fence and shook her head. I knew what she was thinking and not for the last time. Cows are tough animals. Certainly, tougher than us.

I pulled into the driveway and drove up to the house. I picked up the sleepy Jack, and Kerry got Mike. We carried them both in, got them changed and into bed.

“I know what you mean,” I said as we stood outside their room in the hallway.

“About what?”

“About today being the first time being we feel part of the community.”

“Maybe that’s what the smell of burnt hair is all about,” Kerry said as she put the boy’s smelly clothes in a laundry basket and slid it over to me.

It was a little too late at night to get into analyzing that philosophical thought so I put my smelly clothes in the basket and went to turn on the shower.