Wednesday morning at the Sterling Livestock Sale Barn is busy, because that is sale day. Pickups hitched to stock trailers line up in the dirt lot with engines idling, as they await their turn to back up to the unloading gate. The trailers are filled with milling cattle, their steaming breath makes fog clouds as they rock the trailers like docked boats. Inside the pickup cabs, men sit cocooned in thick winter coats, and shit covered boots; maybe a bright colored, purty kerchief knotted around their neck. Faces hidden by cowboy hats or farm company caps. Golden Harvest. John Deere. Pioneer. They throw their gloves on the dashboard. Their big hands hold cellphones to their ears; they talk and wait, wheel and deal.
When they are done unloading their cattle they sign the ticket with a signature and a drawing of their brand. Then they park their rig and walk inside after cleaning their boots on the scrapper by the door. There is a restaurant upstairs at the sale barn, and it's only open on Wednesdays. The lunch special might be lasagna, chili, or oven steak. They always have burgers. But more importantly they have homemade pie.
A month ago I went to the cattle auction and bought a slice of banana cream pie and 26 first-calf heifers. The blurry photo was taken in the late evening, in the pens at the sale barn, as I was loading my last of three loads for the drive home. Once home, I kept the heifers in the corral for a week or so to let them settle in. This allows me to watch them and make sure they don't get sick from the stress of being moved and handled. These heifers have been grazing in a large pasture for the last seven months, and aren't used to having people around, so locking them in and walking through them on a daily basis calms their skittishness.
After their short internment, it was time to put them through the squeeze chute and work them. Fortunately these heifers have had all the necessary vaccinations and only needed to be branded and given new ear tags. Maret, Gary, Joel, Ella, and I spent a few hours working them. Joel and Gary pushed the heifers into the crowd tub and moved them through the alley. I ran the squeeze chute, and did the branding. Maret removed their old ear tags, and put in new ones. Ella was in charge of bookkeeping.
Our tagging system is fairly simple and straightforward; green tagged cattle belong to Maret and Ned, white tagged cattle belong to Felzien Farms. The numbering system is also simple. The first numeral is the last number of the year of their birth, the next two numbers are just a number to track them by. For example, all these heifers tag numbers start with a "0" because they were born in 2010. So these tags are 001 through 026. Since our herd is, technically, two herds ( Ned and Maret's herd and Felzien Farm's herd) running together, half the heifers get green tags and the other half white. Got it ?
After getting their new ear tags, heifers were also branded. Since there are two herds, we used both brands. Felzien Farm's heifers were branded with the "Quarter circle reverse 2" brand seen in the close up photos. My heifers were branded with our "Lazy sixty-nine" brand which can be seen in last photo. Both of our brands go on the left hip.
The hot brand is pressed carefully onto the hide, since it has to burn through all the hair. The trick is to not let the brand slip and slide which will leave a blotched, unreadable brand. Then it is held in place until the hide shows the color of saddle leather. Each brand hisses a thick, acrid cloud of burnt hair smoke that permeates our clothes and nostrils. As soon as we get home we change clothes, and start a load of laundry.
In the branding photos you will see some blue markings on the rear on the heifers. This is grease crayon. When bred cattle are sold at a sale barn, they are pregnancy checked, and the number of months they are into gestation are written on their sides. The color of the crayon mark indicates the age of the animal, blue being the color for first calf heifers. Our heifers are all marked with a blue 5, 5+, 6, or 6+. This indicates they were that many months along. These heifers were bred with artificial insemination (A.I.), then put with a clean-up bull for sixty days. They are due to start calving the middle of February, and since they were A.I'.d that means the first weeks of calving will be rather busy.
Wish me luck, I'll need it.