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Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The Branding 2012

Just like most ranchers in the area, my family has a branding in the spring to brand and vaccinate calves. We had our branding on May 16th. So yes, a very, very long time ago. And the last time I posted was at least a week before that. It's official. I'm a slacker. Lately I moved to town to get a job, working on the ranch wasn't really paying any bills. I'm working full-time (still) in town, going to school online full-time for Business and still working on my real estate license. It seems like I should be done with that last one by now, huh? 

Anywho, I thought I'd post some pictures of the branding... like I promised many moons ago. Anything we do at a branding is for the health and safety of our calves. We would never do anything to harm them or decrease their quality of life. After all, they are our income. So, we vaccinated them with the usual 7-way which vaccinates for Clostridium chauvoei, septicum, novyi, sordelli and prefrigens Types C & D. A mouthful eh? Basically it, you know, keeps a calf healthy. I wish I could elaborate but I'm not a pharmacists or a veterinarian. We also vaccinated with Bovi-Shield Gold IBR-BVD which (yes I know what this one does!) vaccinates against Infections Bovine Rhinotracheitis or IBR. IBR can cause diarrhea, influenza, and other respiratory problems. I know, I'm so smart. And I can google the crap out of things. But mostly I'm smart... We also poured all of our calves with Ivomec. That's the brand name, but we actually used the generic kind because we're cheap. Ha. Anyway, Ivomec is basically a pour on bug repellent. It keeps insects off the cows which can cause serious health problems, not to mention be annoying as heck. We branded the calves. We used 3 different brands, mine, my parent's, and my oldest younger brother. We also used growth hormones this year. We implanted the steer calves with the hormone in the ear to help them grow faster. We have never done this before and wanted to experiment with it. Unfortunately its been an extremely dry year and our calves don't actually weigh any more than they did last year because the grass didn't have as good of food value as usual. The bull calves all mysteriously become steer calves. Alright, we cut them. It's a pretty simple process that the average person would not want to see, like ever. So yea, I'll leave it at that. It is sanitary and the safest way to castrate bull calves. Banding can cause infection and once the infection reaches their guts there's pretty much nothing you can do. Also, most people will tag as well, but we tag our calves as they are born so we can match up the calf to the mama and track our herd a little better. Well, to the pictures. 

The next 6 pictures are a pretty good example of how to wrestle a calf as demonstrated by the professionals, my sister and I.   If I had known I was going to be photographed I might have made fewer funny faces!











This is what the Ivomec looks like. 

A good shot of my dad branding. 
If you can see, my cousin Matt's girlfriend, Tyler, is vaccinating.
She has a vaccination gun in her right hand . 
Me (left) and my sister (right) wrestling while my cousin Tyler is cutting. 
My brother Joe working on his loop while roping. 
My cousin, Matt and brother ,Jared enjoying some
Rocky Mountain Oysters. Yes, calf balls.