Cattle branding in Arizona

by Rachel Been (Subscribe to Rachel Been's posts)
Posted Jun 11th 2008 10:26AM
Filed under: Beef, Summer

image of cowboys branding cattle in arizona

I recently went to Arizona to eat some BBQ and drink 12 packs of Fresca, drive through river beds, trot ignorantly on a stubborn horse (groin = bruised), and of course, photograph cattle branding.

Although I am not a big advocate of red meat, I wasn't squeamish during the dance of burning leather, even though the smell permeated for a few hours after the event. I met some amazing cowboys who have been working the land their entire lives, and much to PETA's amazement, confessed a sense of respect for the animals. Unlike most of the cattle in the country, detrimentally being fed corn and forced into claustrophobic pens, these rodeo cows roam fresh Arizona soil and eat actual grass... and now they have an aesthetic sear to match their posh lifestyle.

Click on the photo above for the entire gallery.

Tags: arizona, cattle branding, CattleBranding, morning star ranch, MorningStarRanch

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6-11-2008 @ 3:13PM

Baron said...

Knowing the owners of three different feed lots (one smaller one, two huge ones) back home, they all had their own cattle and were very respectful of the cattle they housed at their lots. The majority of their workers essentially lived on the the lots to and, at least the ones I met, were respectful of the animals too. We didn't really have any sizable processing plants (feed lots and processing plants are two different operations), only very small operations, so I can't say that I know the temperament of the owners and workers there. Also, many ranchers, due to economic constraints (among other reasons) choose to move their cattle into a feed lot instead of trying to keep them on their own land. I don't know what the % was at our lots, but I would say that over 60% of the cattle were owned by people other than the lot.

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