Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living Freeze Branding Cows

The cows, are cows, not steers, or heifers.

We have freeze branded of, and on years back, with mixed results.


Anyone ever done the freeze brands?

The son is going to try again on some young cows.

Wish us luck.

Richard, I have zero experience with it.

What is the advantage?


If you don't mind me asking what is the going rate for young bred cows over there?

Sam, I'm out of touch on cow prices, a check on sale yards websites would tell us both.

A freeze brand is a number that can't be lost like an ear tag. No scratching the head when a cow loses her ear tag.

On black, or dark colored cattle, the brand grows out white.
I'm sure you have seen pictures on bull catalogs?
We did a white cow years back, the color was not there, but the welt was readable.

%99 alcohol, and dry ice is what he is using.
One rub is using the same number iron often, say number 111, takes time cooling that iron between uses.
The "irons" , are copper, it conducts the cold well.

Clear as mud?

When I was in 4H, the club freezed branded our steers. If I remember, it's stress free, and less likely to get infected.


If you have a pair of cattle chippers, trim the hair, so it is less likely to interfere with the branding. If it doesn't adhere well, the hair can grow back to its original color.

Richard, I gotcha, numeric identification(info).


We tag each generation of new cows according to the year they were born.

Current crop of bred heifers are the 500 series. The last 500's were born in 2005, easy to tell them apart...



Our cows that lose a tag get a 2 digit replacement number with an R on the front.

R3

R97

No way to tell age and that is a downside.



We've thought about number branding for age reference but have never gotten in the habit for our replacement heifers.



What eartags are the best???


We have been using Allflex for years.

As I understand it a freeze brand is not a legal brand for ownership.
When we do it, we do have a registered brand in Iowa. "H bar", on the right hip. That would be a hot brand.

Hot branding makes me think of "Ghost Riders in the Sky"

Those mystery cows keep a cowboy guessing.

Ben, as to clipping, I'm told you need to nearly shave the hair off, no dirt on the hide. The idea is bare hide, and cold iron.

Yeah we used to trim a big square then apply the brand.


Sam, we use a Allfex tags as well.

Our cows have a tag in each ear(same number), and when we run them through the chute to vaccinate, etc. We keep some handy to replace any missing tags. Works ok if the cow doesn't lose two tags at once....grin

Ben, I have tagged both ears as well, we mark the back button, just in case that helps.

With fly tags also, the cow can get a ventilated ear fast.

Not sure if cattle and horses hair is the same, but used to work at lab where we bled draft horses, and we froze branded everyone, did shave to skin, always had good i d for years after, no stress was our reasoning!!!!!

modick, have you ever hot branded a horse?

Yeah we tried a few!! Even in draft horse stantions that was as bad as it gets on both sides!!

If you haven't read the Herriot books, you are really missing some good reading. Pertinent here is the chapter where some older brothers are matching up the material in their notebook with ear brands.

I have freeze branded horses. We used liquid nitrogen for coolant. Shave the hair and hold the iron(bronze)in place for 20 seconds or so to turn the hair white. If the animal is white, hold it longer and the brand will be bare similar to a hot brand. Some ranchers I knew thought it would make their cows more valuable because it doesn't damage the hide. I doubt that. It's an awfully slow process to brand very many cows.

I don't know much about it, but I have a set of new 3" brass irons that run from #0 to #8 if anyone is interested in them.

Any thread on branding always reminds me of this Doug Larson Far Side cartoon:



John

The man had talent!

We have freeze branded bulls that are going to be around for awhile. Cows get a hot brand just because it is quick and done when they are heifers although if you want to freeze branding would work for them too.

Calves are hot branded too.

Freeze branding, as someone noted, is a lengthy process compared to the hot brand. About ten minutes per head I would guess with a three iron brand.

you could always cut dewlaps instead.

I used to see quite a few horses from a quarter horse ranch that were all freeze branded with the ranch brand.

Left hip. IRRC, it was the H bar H brand.

Now, those were some beautiful brands on those horses.

All the brands were white hair against whatever color the horse was. Stood out like a neon sign. Pretty good advertising for that breeder too.

Today was to be the day for the freezing branding, but the rain put the keybosh on that.
Like I said on another thread, I use firefox here, and can't copy on explorer, and post here. The freeze brand is there to stay.