Livestock branding

2026 has been designated the International Year of Rangelands and Pastoralists. In recognition of this, we are pleased to share some insights into the practices and cultural traditions of ranching on the rangelands of southwestern Saskatchewan.

Branding is the act of permanently marking livestock to identify its owner. Synonymous with the lore and legend of the North American cowboy, branding is still practiced by many cattle producers. Marking animals is necessary to identify ownership of free-ranging livestock on open-range ranches or shared grazing lands. It is also a means of identifying animals that have roamed or have been stolen or ‘rustled.’ Traditional branding involves the application of a heated metal branding iron to the skin of the animal. Newer methods include the use of an electric branding iron or freeze branding with the use of liquid nitrogen to cool the iron. Other means of identifying livestock include dangle tags, radio frequency (RFID) tags, metal tags, tattoos, ear marking, and DNA samples. Branding is the only one that is both easily visible and permanent.

Historically, brands could be created using a vast collection of complex symbols and designs. In Saskatchewan, brands can contain a combination of capital letters and numbers as well as a selection of symbols such as a triangle, a diamond or a half diamond, a circle or a quarter circle, bars and slashes, a cross, and flying wings. The placement of a brand on an animal can also be a part of its identification. Brands can be placed in one of six different locations including left or right sides of the hip, of the rib, or of the shoulder. With various options for placement, the same brand can be registered for up to six different producers if placed in different locations on the animal.

The position and orientation of characters in a brand and their relation to each other determines how a brand is read. Brands are read from top to bottom, left to right. A character rotated 90 degrees in either direction would be referred to as “lazy left” or “left right”. A straight line above or below a character is called a “bar”. If it is beside the character, it is a “running bar”. The addition of wings makes it “flying” and short bars connected at the bottom to look like feet make it “walking”.

Brands are like a family’s coat-of-arms. They have deep-rooted cultural connections to ranching heritage and rural communities. They will sometimes contain the initials of their registered owner and can be passed down from generation to generation. Ranches share the names of their brands, such as the historic Turkey Track, 76, and N-N, three of the first large ranches that operated on the open-range of what is now Grasslands National Park.

Branding events typically take place in the spring of the year. They are an opportunity to not only brand animals, but also to address other matters related to herd health management and vaccinations for cows and calves before they are released to graze on their summer pastures. Brandings are social events with neighbours gathering to help each other in the work. They are attended by all ages and are full of camaraderie after the long winter and spring calving season. A delicious meal is shared by all when the work is done. Many ranch children pass through the ranks from their early days carrying the prairie oyster pail, to helping “wrestle” calves, to administering vaccinations and medication, to becoming skilled horsemen and horsewomen responsible for roping calves. In all of this, they are carrying the ranching traditions to the next generation.

The following memories are excerpts from Thelma Poirier’s book The Grasslanders, which is a history and a collection of stories about the families whose lands now compose the landscape of Grasslands National Park. First published in 2017, the book is in its third printing. Copies are available for purchase at Prairie Wind & Silver Sage – Friends of Grasslands Museum and gift shop and at the Grasslands National Park Visitor Centre, both in Val Marie and at the Rodeo Ranch Museum in Wood Mountain, SK. Copies are also available through Saskatchewan’s Single Integrated Library system (SILS).

Branding was introduced to Mexico by the Spaniards and was soon adopted by ranchers in Texas as a method for identifying livestock. A calf was always branded with the same mark as the mother. In 1898, the government of the then Northwest Territories passed an ordinance that required all brands to be registered. No one else could use the same brand in the same location on an animal. A registered brand was proof of ownership. In 1905, the government of the newly created Province of Saskatchewan passed its own regulations regarding branding. – Boyd Anderson

“A week before we actually branded, we gathered the cattle. They were grazing on a 15,000- acre field, so every day we got up and moved another bunch into the holding field before the calves had a chance to suck. Otherwise, they wanted to lie down again. We were riding colts, not really colts but young horses that needed experience. And they were getting a lot of it.

When branding day came, we were up in the dark, we’d truck fresh horses over to the holding field and start gathering at daylight. There was a set of corrals against the east side. Thirty, maybe forty, riders would show up – Dixons, Gillespies, Rauschs, Pritchards, neighbours from Reliance and from across the line, like Connie Cox.

It only took about half an hour to corral the herd, about 450 head with calves at foot. Everyone knew what job to do. We sort of grew into it. Dad and some of the older men handled the branding irons, which were heated with a propane flame. This was long past the days when the branding fire was created using willow sticks. Then the other jobs were divvied out down the line – some of the men castrated, others vaccinated, still others earmarked – ours was a nip off the left ear – until us kids were called out. Some of us roped, which meant catching a calf by the hind legs and then dragging it closer to the fire. There, the wrestlers took over, one holding the head, the other stretching the hind legs and holding them tight at the same time. Five sets of wrestlers were working. Of course, everyone preferred roping, so we had to change off. This branding at one ranch or another went on for about ten days in row.” – Trevor Walker

“I never knew when we would be branding. And we always had a lot of people, a hundred people, town people and so forth. My roasts were always 35 or 40 pounds and I’d cook three of four of them and we always had to take the dinners over east to the camp and that was eleven miles…I made all the pies; one time I made 22 pies. Then towards the last we started barbecuing over at the corrals and we put in a pit and I took steakettes and I had the potatoes all ready to put in the pit and I took salads and buns and pies and that was it.” – Myrna Walker

“Branding was kind of like old home week. We saw all the people we hadn’t seen all spring. Everybody went to everybody else’s branding. Dixon would be branding about 400 head of calves. Dixon always branded on the second of July and the Larsons on the fourth and so on. They weren’t just branding, they were vaccinating for diseases like blackleg – that was a blood disease – and for septicaemia, which was called shipping fever. Doc was a veterinarian, and he made sure things were done the best way.” – Mike Smith

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