Branding Day

We lost my father-in-law to pancreatic cancer a year ago. I lost a dear friend when he left this world, and his life made a distinct impression on mine.

We missed Papa at branding this year—a special day our family looks forward to each spring. It’s a formal marking of the new additions to our herd with the calves born in January and February. Our family brand is RCC, which stands for Richardson Cattle Company. This brand, this ranch, and all that it symbolizes, means something different to each of us—but this place, it brings us together for hard work, big laughs, and long days.

In preparation for sending the entire herd to graze all summer on the national forest at Buffalo Peaks near Fairplay, we brand each new calf to display clear ownership, belonging, and responsibility. When a hiker or hunter accidentally leaves a closed gate open in the high country, the brands on our cattle tell the state trooper exactly whose cattle are standing on Highway 285 with traffic whizzing past, day or night. The Colorado Brand Board—active since the mid-1800s when brands were needed to tell cattle apart on the open range—calls the brand a “return address.” Brands also help track livestock disease and hopefully complicate the crime of cattle rustlers who steal livestock to sell across state lines.

We do at least two brandings each spring—one for the early calves, and one for those born at the latter end of the two-month calving window. The bigger the calves grow, the harder they are to work.

A group of 250 mother cows and their calves are brought in from the fields to the corrals. It’s a noisy process as they are all wondering what is going on as they are sorted: cows in one pen, calves in the other. The volume multiplies as the mothers and their calves call to each other across the dusty alleyway. Each pair has a distinct call that helps them find each other in a group of 500 bawling bovine. The mother cows are sent single-file through a long, narrow alley until—one at a time—they are stopped in a metal chute that holds them still while they are given a vaccine to help prevent disease while they are away from the ranch all summer. Their teeth and body condition are noted, and their ear tag numbers are checked against our list before they spend the rest of the day in a pasture at the end of the corrals, awaiting reunification with their calves.

The propane heaters roar and heat the branding irons while my brother-in-law, with whom we ranch, explains the jobs of the day in detail to the crowd of his kids and ours—and to the many friends and neighbors who have given their precious Saturday to come help brand. The group of 30 or so stands in the straw-filled corrals, hats shielding their faces from the bright spring sun. There’s an energy in the air as young and old take a job: calf pushers, gate keepers, vaccinators, castrators, wrestlers, record keepers, and of course, the branders.

The first calf is brought in and quickly caught, turned on its side and held still by our son, Life, at its head—and by our son-in-law, Jack, at its feet. Our daughter, Grace, 26, quickly administers a vaccine in the calf’s neck, careful not to stick her brother in the leg. The ear tag number is noted by our nephew’s wife, and “bull” is called out by Josh, Director of Chaffee County EMS, who has come for the fun. He castrates the bull calf with a small, thick green rubber band, stretched and clamped down—checked and doubled-checked—as a steer calf with a rogue testicle at market time is significantly less valuable.

Our son, Abe, 22, navigates carefully with the red hot RCC and stops at the calf. Life and Jack hold the calf still as Abe places the brand on the its left flank. He touches down just enough to leave a brand but not break all the way through the skin. Life closes his eyes as the smoke and smell of burning hair and flesh flush his face—his own flank flexing his own RCC tattoo as he holds the bawling calf steady. A memory from his last trip to visit our daughter Naomi, 24, stationed in Oahu as an Army nurse—Life’s tattoo matches hers.

I send Naomi a video of the moment: the mountains, the calves, and the amazing people who have come for branding day. There is a distinct void always felt while she is away. That night, when she called to see how the day went, she told us that she added her name to the list of volunteers to go to Iran, if needed. “I’m not married, I don’t have kids, and I’m a great nurse. If I had my leg blown off, I’d want me as a nurse.”

Calf after calf after calf is branded as four teams work hard in the dust, manure, and smoke. Our youngest daughter, Esther, opens the gate to let each branded calf through, and I walk them out through the barn to the pasture gate, where their mamas wait for them and call them by name. I turn back and walk west back into the barn and pause—stopped in my tracks by the majesty of Mount Shavano framed in the huge doorway.

Back at the corrals, laughter and banter bubble up above the dust, dander, and din of the day. Two hundred and fifty calves later, the propane is turned off and the crew gathers together in the middle of the corral, dusting off jeans and wiping sweaty brows from under filthy hats. It’s past lunchtime and the work is all done. There’s tradition waiting: chili lunch and a cold Coors Banquet beer.

But first, a circle is made as exhausted arms rest over sore shoulders.

Gratitude is given for all the hard work. Heads are bowed beneath the bluebird sky as our neighbor, Jim, now the elder of the crew in Papa’s absence, is asked to pray for lunch. “We thank you Father…” he says, as heads nod, knowing that a mostly injury-free day of working cattle is a gift.

We picnic on last summer’s brittle grass, telling stories and enjoying the simple things in life: community, laughter, and hard work. The herd sits content and quiet in the pasture just beyond the barn. The calves rest beside their mothers, their new brands glistening in the warm spring sun.

May the impressions we make upon each other be ones we want to last for a lifetime, and beyond.