Rustling Means We Must Protect Branding
By Jen Hill
Livestock branding comes under heavy fire from animal rights activists pretty frequently. They claim it is unnecessarily cruel and abusive to the animals, and they often use our own pictures against us. They show photos of calves tied down and under the iron, pictures that often make the practice appear much worse than it really is. Of course, very few of them have ever attended a branding in person, let alone continued to work with and observe those calves post branding, but it doesn’t stop them from declaring the practice both obsolete and brutal. But the reality is that branding and permanently marking your livestock still very much matters today and ranchers should be making sure we protect our right to do so.
Many people consider cattle rustling to be a thing of the past, picturing John Wayne style movies and cowboys engaging in gun fights to retrieve their stolen longhorns, but the truth is cattle theft is still very much a problem across much of the U.S. today. In the wide-open big country ranches of the west thieves regularly lift calves right off their mothers before the owner has had a chance to brand. Our operation experienced this frequently, especially when cattle prices were high. Go farther east to areas that border brand law lines and cows often disappear as they are hauled to sales without brand law restrictions. Because each state is responsible for setting and maintaining its own brand laws there are no available national statistics for cattle theft but if we look at the two biggest states for cattle production, Texas and Nebraska, we can see it’s substantial enough to matter, especially to those ranchers that are hit. The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association investigate roughly 1,000 cattle thefts annually while during 2019 Nebraska 975 head were reported stolen.
Ear tags can easily be removed, leaving ear marking and branding as the only permanent way to ensure your cattle are identifiable. Last week it was reported that Wilbur Jackson was indicted for cattle theft for the second time in Texas. Jackson was caught and the cattle identified because they were notched on both ears. When stolen cattle are found and returned it’s almost always because they were branded and notched.
Unfortunately we live in a society that is increasingly pushing back against standard ranching practices, we are under constant attack. Movements like the Colorado PAUSE Act and its counterpart in Oregon IP13 are clearly designed to end all animal agriculture and push the window for the general public. We know these people want to burn our businesses to the ground, so what can do to protect our right to brand? We can start by not making their job easier with our social media posts. Branding is a big part of our year. Many ranchers bring out friends and family, there’s a meal and fellowship with fellow ranchers. It’s a time of year everyone looks forward to, and we often take pictures. The problem is when we post some of those pictures onto our social media page we can be inadvertently giving the animal rights activists free ammunition. So be choosey about what you post. Pictures of the family, the cattle coming in or out of the pen or happily grazing post branding are great but save the ones of the act of branding for yourself. There’s no need to give anyone the ability to use it against you because they don’t understand what’s actually happening.
Another way to protect the industry is to protect the actual brandings themselves, being careful of who you allow to help you brand and vocal when you need to be. We all know that one guy who can get a little too enthusiastic at brandings. Maybe he’s swinging his rope and charging his horse into the calf pen with more gusto than required, getting those calves unnecessarily stirred up, maybe he’s ground crew and playing it rougher than needed. Either way it’s up to us to speak to them and put a stop to it.
As they saying goes, trust your neighbors but brand your cattle. But it’s more than that. Trust your neighbors, brand your cattle and protect your right to do so.