WHAT WORKS FOR US
MSW Organic Farms Owners: Mark and Kristina Stewart Nearest Town: Ponoka, Alta. Established: 2000 Elevation: 807 m (2,650 ft) Annual Precipitation: 355 mm (14 inches) average rain (not including the melt)
Making Your Mark
Size: 2,000 acres
By TERRI MASON
R
anching in Western Canada takes on many faces, but one thing ranchers know is that tags may come and go — but a brand is forever. Even today, hundreds of years after cattle first stepped onto North American shores, a well-applied brand is still the fastest way to identify a breeder or an owner — especially from a distance.
DELAYED BRANDING MARK STEWART
Our Longhorns calve out on the 200-acre calving field. They start calving about the middle of April. There’s no night checking, and I’m excited to go out every morning. Calving is pretty easy over here. The first two weeks of July, I bring all the cows and calves in and the calves get their RFID tag, an eight-way shot and dewormer, then they go back out to pasture. 38
We don’t brand our calves until they’re about a year old. For our purposes, we find that the brands get too big. We have our brand plus the number brand that has to go on, and it’s hard to get a 2” brand that does not grow into something monstrously big. What works best for us is we brand when the animal is about a year old. We know which animals we are keeping for our herd. There are many ways to do it, but how we brand for the association we register our Longhorns with is that the first calf born gets the number 1 and the year underneath on the left hip. So last year's calves will be branded 1 over 19, the second will get 2 over
Cattle/Herd size: 170 cows/30 bulls/15, 5-yr-old trophy (lead) steers Website: mswfarms.com Cattle brand graphic and location: MST (LR)
19, and so on. We know the order because when they are born, I tag them with the needed info such as mother, sire, and which breeding group they were in. An interesting thing about Longhorns is that you can breed the same cow to the same bull for a decade and get a completely different coloured calf every year. Another thing is that their horns grow immensely, especially during the first three years of their life. I’ve spent a lot of money bringing great genetics for horns out of the U.S. Last year's calves are almost a year old, and they’ve already got a good 10” of horn coming out each side. I’m well-known for having some Canadian Cowboy Country April/May 2020
PHOTO COURTESY MARK STEWART
Branding
Cattle breed: Registered Texas Longhorns
