6 minute read
Making Your Mark
What Works For Us ~ Branding
By TERRI MASON
Photo Credit Mark Stewart
Ranching 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 & Kristina Stewart ~ MSW Organic Farms
Established: 2000 Elevation: 807 m (2,650 ft) Annual Precipitation: 355 mm (14 inches) average rain (not including the melt) Size: 2,000 acres Cattle breed: Registered Texas Longhorns Cattle/Herd size: 170 cows/30 bulls/15, 5-yr-old trophy (lead) steers Website: mswfarms.com
Cattle brand graphic and location: MST (LR)
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.
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 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 of the best horned cattle in Western Canada because I’ve spent the last 12 years improving the horn genetics.
I get phone calls every week from people looking for horns, skulls — it’s a very big part of the market, and they range in price from $100–$3,000. Everyone’s trying to get rid of horns, and I’m trying to increase horns because it’s a part of our profit.
However, with really cold weather, we have to worry about frozen horns. We have a pasture that is heavily treed with spruce, and that’s where we move them if the forecast is bad. But still, out of that long deep freeze we had last winter (-30 – -40°C) we had five cows freeze their horns. It takes about six months for them to fall off — and they don’t grow back.
When we are branding our yearlings, the horns do create difficulties. See, a five-year old cow with a big set of horns knows how to manoeuvre without smacking them, but the yearlings don’t know yet how to move without hitting their horns. And, because they're yearlings, we use a squeeze for our brandings.
Longhorns are fascinating, and they are a multi-stream income, from horns to skulls to hides to their meat. In 1987, Texas A&M did a study: grass-finished Longhorn meat is leaner than all other meats, including turkey, chicken, buffalo and venison. Plus, they’re just nice cattle to be around — and that’s what works for us.”
NOT YOUR TYPICAL RANCHER
Dustin, Marla & Destry Gonnet ~ Gonnet Performance Horses
Established: 2008 Elevation: 1,021 m (3,350 ft) Annual Precipitation: 223.3 mm (9 inches) Size: 880 acres Cattle breed: Commercial/Black Angus Cattle/Herd size: 0-1,200 head Facebook: Gonnet Performance Horses
Cattle brand location: Bar over XO (LR)
I’m not really your conventional rancher. I sold my entire cow herd last year and bought a whole bunch of calves. But the way this market is, it doesn’t mean I couldn’t be calving cows next month because I could get a good deal and buy 100 cows next week. It’s whatever I think I can make money at.
However, as far as ranching goes, we do consistently breed heifers every year, and they are black. We run black bulls with them, and then I sell them in the fall. After they're bred we ship them to wherever I have grass.
That’s the other “fun” part of being a rancher these days; getting a long-term lease is getting harder and harder to find. We had grass in Saskatchewan and some up by Cochrane, but we don’t anymore. I’m hoping I have some by Priddis this year.
So, for this year, we bought everything in the fall, and we built a bit of a feedlot at home, and we’ve had everything on feed. Lots of times, we’ll buy them closer to grass [spring]. We’re feeding 730 head right now. The ones I own now might not ever see my grass — they might get sold and be replaced. But yes, the ones I buy, I brand.
We do have a couple of different brandings; that’s because it depends on what we’re buying and selling. When we’re buying and selling cows, we have older calves and some younger, and that’s the only reason why we have different brandings. It ain’t because of geographical needs. We pair off the oldest ones, brand them, and when the other ones get old enough, we brand them.
As for our brandings, most of the time it’s just me, Destry and Marla. But if I get a big enough group, I get the neighbours. There’s a lot of guys west of Nanton that I go to their brandings, so they’ll come and help me. Most of the time I use propane to heat the irons, and at my brandings, we head and heel everything, no Nord Forks, no wrestlers. We’ll brand around the beginning of May, and if I can, we brand on grass.
The horses I use are the cutting horses that are in training — the ones I show. I think it gives them a real mental break and I think it’s the best thing for them. But really, I’m not your typical rancher — and that’s what works for us.”
Photo credit Marla Gonnet
