It's time for branding

By John Grant Emeigh - 05/10/2008

Click here to watch video of the cattle branding between Feely and Divide recently. Todd Miller, left, and Eric Johnson leave the corral after a morning of branding on the ranch near Divide.

There are a few things about cattle branding that may make the squeamish, greenhorn a bit weak in the knees: burning cowhide smells a bit ripe and calves lose control of their bowels right when they get hit with the brand.

I can’t blame the poor little bovine. If somebody pressed a red-hot piece of iron against my rump, I’d be in need of a fresh pair of draws, pronto.

I was able to experience all the sights, sounds and smells at my first branding last weekend out at Jimmy Johnson’s ranch near Divide. Now I’m just a tenderfoot from back east, and the closest I’ve ever come to livestock was in the meat department of my local supermarket. But — without trying to sound too uppity — I think I held my own pretty darn well.

I’m not saying that I know everything about cow-pokin’, but I found that if you just shut your mouth and listen, you can catch on quickly. Maybe that’s why old cowboys who haven’t had all their teeth kicked out of their heads tend to be “the quiet types.” It was a beautiful day that Saturday on May 3 for a branding. However, it was a little late in the season for it. Johnson said he prefers to get started by early to mid-April. But winter had its talons dug deep into the flesh of spring, so the branding had to be put off several weeks.

This winter kind of reminds me of Sen. Hillary Clinton: it doesn’t know when it’s time to go away.

Wet or snowy weather are bad conditions for branding, the experienced cowboys explained. Getting a red-hot branding iron wet can ruin the brand mark on a calf. The experience is traumatic enough for the doggies, so they want to get it right the first time.

Despite the delays, Johnson had plenty of volunteers for this year’s branding. Free food and beer have a way of bringing people together on a sunny day.

I threw on some Carhartts and my lucky Filson fishing hat. I don’t wear cowboy hats, because I’m only 5 foot 6 inches tall and a bit stocky, so instead of looking like a wrangler, I’d look more like an oversized psychedelic mushroom.

The process is fairly simple. We first separated the calves into a corral apart from the big cows. It’s strange how the adult cows will moo frantically at the calves in the other pen. It’s almost like they’re warning them about what’s to come, “Watch your backside!” Too late.

We herd each calf one at a time through a chute. Then we lock the calf onto this device called a “branding table.” Johnson’s table is rather old, and a bit cruder than a medieval torture rack, but it gets the job done. The calf is pushed into the table, clamped down by metal arms and hoisted onto its side. Though the table puts the animal in a better position for branding, it still takes a couple of big hosses to hold the kicking legs. For this touchy gig, Johnson employed Butte’s own Tom Malloy. He’s a large fellow who takes his job seriously after a flailing hoof came within a frog’s hair of his nose a few years back.

“Aaah, quit your whining,” Malloy chaffed a calf that brayed loudly after being hit with the first brand.

My job was a simple one: inoculating the calves. Once the animal was branded, I took a short, fat needle and injected 5ccs of antibiotic into the beast to make sure the brand doesn’t get infected. The animals didn’t seem to mind the needle; they were more preoccupied with the fiery shafts of iron being pressed into their flanks.

We were fast and effective. To get them on the table, brand them, put a tag on the ear and inoculate, we probably didn’t take much more than a minute on each calf.

It was a great way to spend the day. I laughed with one of my friends at the branding who said, “You know, there are city slickers back east who will pay $1,000 to spend a day doing this.” Yippee-ki-yay!