Skip to main content

Branding our cattle - Part 2 - how to brand

As I said in Part 1 (registering a brand), I do not support the compulsory branding of cattle in QLD, but unfortunately under the QLD Brands Act 1915 (Section 24) it is illegal to sell unbranded cattle, with the penalty being 6 months jail!  So we will continue to brand them until the law changes (believe me, I'm trying to figure out how to make that happen).



Options for branding
The traditional method of branding is "fire branding" in which a red hot iron brand is held against the skin of the cattle for 2-3 seconds to leave a permanant mark.  I have read all sorts of rubbish about it not hurting the cattle, but I've seen for myself they can be standing in the crush perfectly calm and as soon as that brand touches them, they will struggle and cry out.  Of course it hurts them.

There are a few alternative methods if you MUST brand.  One is freeze branding, which uses dry ice to mark the skin of the animal.  This requires special equipment and more work, but apparently the skin numbs and so the cattle doesn't feel as much pain.  I doubt that this is a very popular method, I don't even know where to get dry ice in the South Burnett, and I'm sure the more remote you get the more difficult it would be.  Also the equipment works out to be more expensive and making the brand (custom made to match your symbol) is more of a specialist job.

You can also get a device that immobalises the cattle (the one I know of is called stock still), which can reduce the stress of being branded (but surely it still hurts them after they are released).

We decided to use fire branding because its simple, its easy to get the equipment and to set it up at any time.  Ideally we shouldn't have to brand at all, but if I can't get the law changed, maybe we will look at some of the less painful methods I mentioned above.

As I said in the last post, we got our brand made by a local blalcksmith.  While it is possible to just light a fire to heat the branding iron, we decided to buy a gas furnace.  This means we get a nice hot iron (and get a good brand on the first attempt), we don't have to wait for a fire to be hot enough and we don't risk starting a bush fire.  I keep forgetting to take a photo of our one, but here are some similar examples.  They are not cheap, but sometimes its worth buying the right tool for the job!

The branding procedure
We usually brand weaners right before we need to sell them.  We will start early in the morning and work all the cattle through the yards, doing what needs to be done to any cows, and separating the weaners into a pen.  Then we get the furnace hot and prepare the ear tags (yes, we also have to ear tag them, see how the brand is redundant!).  We bring the weaners up through the race and catch them in the head bale, we tag them and then Pete gets the branding iron hot enough and holds it to the rump of the animal for 2-3 seconds to create a nice clear brand.  It usually takes them a few seconds to react, which is just enough time to remove the branding iron before they struggle and smudge it.  Then we let the poor thing go and bring in he next victim weaner.  If we are organised and everything goes smoothly, it can be quite a quick process.  Unnecessary, frustration, but quick.

Do you brand cattle?  What method do you use?  Would you support a move to optional branding in QLD?

Comments

  1. I have used freeze branding on my horses. They just stood there showing no reaction whilst it was done, so I'm guessing it wasn't particularly painful at all.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks, I appreciate all your comments, suggestions and questions, but I don't always get time to reply right away. If you need me to reply personally to a question, please leave your email address in the comment or in your profile, or email me directly on eight.acres.liz at gmail.com

Popular posts from this blog

Chicken tractor guest post

Sign up for my weekly email updates here , you will find out more about chickens, soap and our farmlife, straight to your inbox, never miss a post!  New soap website and shop opening soon.... Tanya from Lovely Greens invited me to write a guest post on chicken tractors for her blog.  I can't believe how many page views I get for chicken tractors, they seem to be a real area of interest and I hope that the information on my blog has helped people.  I find that when I use something everyday, I forget the details that other people may not be aware of, so in this post for Tanya, I tried to just write everything I could think of that I haven't covered in previous posts.  I tried to explain everything we do and why, so that people in other locations and situations can figure out how best to use chicken tractors with their own chickens. The dogs like to hang out behind the chicken tractors and eat chicken poo.  Dogs are gross! If you want to read more about chicken tractor

The new Eight Acres website is live!

Very soon this blogspot address will automatically redirect to the new Eight Acres site, but in the meantime, you can check it out here .  You will find all my soaps, ebooks and beeswax/honey products there, as well as the blog (needs a tidy up, but its all there!).  I will be gradually updating all my social media links and updating and sharing blog posts over the next few months.  I'm very excited to share this new website with you!

Garden Update - July 2013

This month I'm joining the Garden Share Collective , which was started last month by Lizzie from Strayed from the Table , to allow vege gardeners to share their successes and failures and generally encourage everyone to grow more of their own food organically.  This first month, I'll give a detailed update on everything that's growing in my garden, for anyone who hasn't been following for long.  I'll do my normal farm update on Tuesday as well. If you've just joined me, welcome to my vege garden.  I recently wrote about gardening in our sub-tropical climate , so if you're wondering about the huge shade structure, that's for protecting the garden during our hot, humid summers.  At the moment though, the garden is full of brassicas, which grow best here in winter, and are suitably frost-proof.  The garden is about 12 m long by 5 m wide, and surrounded in chicken mesh to keep out the chickens and the bandicoots.  The garden has spilled out around the edg