Robbin’s iPhoto. Pictured with me: Shawn Fox & Chuck Fry
I was weaned on a copy of the Teco calf table and my job at six or seven was to push the calves up a narrow chute through the sliding gate to the table. My dad was on one side and Clarence Holdbrooks on the other. Clarence would catch the head and squeeze the body of the calf, and then tip the table into a horizontal position. My dad would put a rope around the back feet of the calf and stretch them tight to make it immobile so the bull calves could be castrated and all the calves branded, vaccinated and ear marked. Once done, the table would be tipped to a vertical position and the calf released. The three of us, two men and a boy, would brand 50 head in about 2 hours.
The calves were small, but I learned a lot from the back side of those calves. Of course my denim jeans would be covered with shit. Naturally the calves would often kick me, but I learned that the closer I got to the calf the less the kick would hurt as opposed to standing back and getting the full force of the kick.
Branding on the calf table wasn’t much fun compared to roping the calves a horseback, so by the time I got my own cows, we headed, heeled and stretched them out for the process. And so it went for fifty years here, a crew of the neighbors branding one another’s calves—trading labor.
I remember branding calves for Forrest Homer in a 20’ x 20’ board pen where you needed to know how to throw a trap with your heel rope. But since then the corrals have gotten larger and the action quicker to where today’s brandings have become more like team ropings that are harder on the calves, so much so that Robbin and I have gone back to using the calf table.
Robbin’s iPhoto. Terri Blanke, Allie Fox, Tammi Rivas
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