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Life is too short to eat bad food! Sharing great recipes, farm life, stories and photography from our Northern California dairy farm.

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November 10, 2010

Beef Branding

I'm sure most of you are familiar with livestock branding and know it has been around for a very long time.  It's used for marking livestock to identify the owner.  Each brand is registered and there are no duplicates. 

While Bryce was in school, Paige and I decided to tag along with Dominic, my father-in-law, George and some hired hands, to gather our natural beef calves from property that we rent for them to graze upon, as it was their day to become branded.  This is my own personal opinion, but I think beef cows are notorious for escaping from what seems to be a very secure fence line.....even if they have hundreds of acres to roam, like ours do.  You know the saying 'the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence'?  Well in the mind of beef cow, this is definitely thought to be true!   













human brand photos google images

While we were waiting for the truck and trailer to arrive, Paige and I took a little nature walk and found some fun things to photograph.















Trailer arrived, beef calves waiting.  And in they go, to be driven down the road, to the same place where we separate the mama and calf pairs in the early summer.














Someone found the window.......


















The branding itself, only takes about 10 seconds or so per calf.  These two were in and out of the shoot and hung out to wait for their friends.















Paige oversees the entire operation.  All went well.

I honestly have no idea why there is a desire to brand one's own body. Yikes! 
human brand photos by google images

Happy Wednesday!
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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I really wish there was a better way to identify cows without having to burn them. I imagine that would be incredibly painful and traumatic.

Nancy Grossi ~ Churned In Cali ~ The Wife of a Dairyman said...

Anonymous, it's not as traumatic as you may invision. The photos taken above were taken within seconds of the branding and as far as I could tell, they were acting completely normal. They headed out with their mamas to graze the hillside just like they normally do.