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I've been looking forward to finally getting to rope some calves on my draft colt. We've had a bunch of rain and should have been branding for a couple weeks already.

She's 3 now and about as gentle as they come. Her mother was a percheron and the stud a quarter horse.

Here she is about 1 week old



And from last saturday. That might not be the first calf but it was one of the first few. You can tell it really made her nervous.





I only roped about 15 calves on her and then switched to my older horse. For a couple reasons, while my colt is very gentle I don't have her reining great yet one handed and we had a lot of ground help so I needed to be dragging them in fast. Plus I didn't want to make her first branding a chore.

I'd already gathered on her the day before plus that morning.


My daughter roped with me too.



This is my older horse, half sister to the draft. Out of a different mare. She's 9. When I brought that calf in there was only one wrestler available to I held the back legs while he held the head. I don't remember what Bernardino and I were talking about then.

Yo sure did have enough ground help

Nice Ralphie. They both look a bit Hancock on the color.

As a greenhorn, I'd like to try that sometime.

Very interesting Ralphie, sweet pony!



Anymore we just use a calf table.


Way slower so we have 3-4 small brandings but it only takes 3 guys, if we're only doing a mini branding(20-40 calves) my dad and I can get by.



Been to a few 'big crew' brandings and they are more fun than work!



I don't see any ear tags, do they band or cut the bull calves?


Nice big calves, we are a couple weeks late as well, some lunker calves now!

All but the heifer calves are born on their own out on the winter-spring range. So only the heifer calves get ear tags right away. The replacement heifers will get tags when they calve. So all the cows on the ranch have an ear tag with a number and how old they are.

We still cut the bull calves, but a lot of folks around here band.

When we had cow/calves, we did both, cut and band. It seemed to me that the cut calves grew out better. Seemed the banded calves had a tendency to be more pot-gutted.

Do any of you guys schedule brandings according to moon phases? An old neighbor did. He said the bleeding from castration and dehorning was always less and the calves recovered and gained better. On the other side of the coin, my dad always said the moon was right when you got them in the pens......

The only guy I help with here cuts all his calves and yearling colts by moon phase. He started doing it that way several years back and said he's never had an issue since he started doing that.

I've never heard this before.

We stopped banding years ago and went back to cutting.

My grandfather (92 year old life long farmer) has always cut both hogs and calves by the moon phase. He'd tell my grandmother to check the Farmer's Almanac and would line up us grandson's to be available to help when the moon was right.

What moon phase do they use?

I "think" it is supposed to be best to cut when it's a new moon...again, I don't know enough about it to say. I just show up when he says he needs help.

A guy who rents some of our land will only plant according to the almanac. I know sometimes he's quite a bit later than other local farmers. He's also always got a bumper crop...but that could just be all the chicken chit he uses for fertilizer.

I've heard about using moon phases all my life but have never seen any verified data about it.
One time I heard a lady say her father always planted his potatoes on Good Friday in the dark of the moon. Well, um, there has never in history been a Good Friday in the dark of the moon so I guess the old boy never got his spuds planted.

I have a buddy in Idaho that cuts his bull calves with the moon. I think he'd look it up in the Farmer's Almanac and then plan his branding.

i worked for a vet for 4 years in high school, so we were cutting calves everyday of the month, there is something to the moon deal. you could see it, sometimes they would bleed bad, other times not at all, but we are like your dad huntsman, we work them when we have the time and they are in the pens. I think the sign is supposed to be below the knee but don't hold me to that.

Virtually everything you can read on it is someone's opinion. I've never been able to find any real research on it at all.

Following certainly doesn't constitute research. Still it's interesting. Seems like if the moon can effect tides it could effect a body. Of course, there are multiple high/low tides each day....I'd think if the moon sign theory is correct then at least the high/low tides during those signs would be somewhat different than they are at other times. ...interesting, one of you please figure it out, I've got to go dig a few holes and put some corner posts in the ground...

http://www.stallingspainthorses.com/trainer/castrate-moon-signs.htm

"B. R. challenged many veterinarians to try castrating on different dates, and inevitably, they all agreed that horses bled less when cut on the moon signs, so we continue to use this method."

"Barometric changes caused by the gravitational pull during the moon phases evidently affect not only the tides, but the blood-flow in our own bodies."

Old man here used to talk about the moon phase and post holes. How some times you barely had enough dirt to fill in around the post and sometimes way too much. He laid it off on the moon. Lots of old timers believed in doing about everything by the almanac. miles

The moon phase was a major consideration when we branded, castrated and dehorned. It was important that the moon phase was within a month of when we did it...

Tides are affected by both the moon and the sun in addition to the earth's rotation. It will be higher and lower during a new moon because both the moon and sun are on the same side of the earth which multiplies the gravitational pull.

Dang...I should have checked before this morning's work. I need to know if I should go back out after lunch or not. Not to worried though, I can find a little dirt if I need more. However, the lighting this morning did have me worried.

I've mooned a few holes in the ground. Sometimes the dirt won't all fit in after I'm done.

Ralphie, we try to band and tag calves as they are born out in the pasture. A couple small 200-300 acre pieces where we winter and feed. Drive around in the pickup and I rope them on foot. Grouchy cows make for a daily adrenaline rush!



Don, the only thing we schedule around is semi trucks and the weather. Only 3 weeks late this year and there are some BIG fricken calves right now.



But we are almost done with 'Hell week', aka one of my least favorite weeks of the year.





Couldn't find ANY help yesterday so dad and I branded/vaccinated over 50 by ourselves before we lucked out and someone answered the phone. Big 20 year old 'kid' saved our ass, he was a great worker and even he was getting tired out.

Still didn't get done sorting off a couple more semi loads pf pairs until it got too dark to read ear tags.

Ralphie
Nice Rommel reins! Would love another picture of them sometime.

Sam we couldn't get any help if we used a table lol. We are branding 300 calves at the Lakeview ranch on the 4th of Jun, will have a crew of about 20 to 25. We feed them a big Tri-tip lunch and all the beer they want after the branding. We use a knife to cut and earmark, head and heal everything. Will have about 8 ropers up at a time. We don't separate the calves from the cows, found out the calves are quieter that way. On the moon thing we don't follow it, probably some truth to it though. My guess it has something to do with atmosphereic pressure. Ed

Ed, I know what you mean!




laughing



We used to wrestle calves, back when my brother and were in school and had a lot of friends.

My dad cut studs for people in a 100-mile radius for many years and always cut by the moon sign. We branded this past Saturday. Great weather and great crew. I will quit ranching before I'd use a calf table and we sort no cows out from the herd. Calves stay quieter and it is easier to stalk the few wild ones with cows in with the calves. Given the choice, we use calf-wrestlers, but we have also used Nordforks when short on help.

I have used Nordfork, three Cowboys can work a lot of calves in a day with one. Worst branding I was ever at was when me and this other fool roped and branded 35 calves by ourselves lol. Had to rope and tie off on every calf lol, never got so tired on getting off and on a horse in my life lol. A Nordfork would have been damn handy at that one. Ed

Nordforks can be great with good ropers and one good man on the ground who knows how to quickly and correctly put them on. I sort of prefer them, actually. For years we just used a stake, inner tube, and a rope with a loop. I utilized that technique in my novel, LOOKING FOR LYNNE, where a small crew hires out to brand 1000 calves. Good calf wrestlers are getting harder and harder to find. We had some good kids Saturday but they were long on enthusiasm but short on technique.