Should Have Been a Cowboy...

This past weekend I had to chance to head up to Inkum Idaho and Brand cattle. (yes, you did read that sentence correctly—Adrienne DeHart branded cattle.) The entire weekend a song by Toby Keith was running through my head; ‘Should have been a cowboy’--I thought it only appropriate to make it the title of this post.

Let me just explain, my friend Lacey’s family has a farm up in Idaho, each year she takes a couple of friends up with her for the ‘branding’ extravaganza, and then a rodeo that night. (apparently the best rodeo in the state.)

I’ve included pictures. I was afraid no one would believe what I had done, unless there were pictures to document.

What happens--all of the cattle get hustled down into this valley area shaped like a bowl. There are rock walls on one side, and then men and women on horses with ropes riding around keep them contained on the other sides. (I really wanted to be a horse rider, but apparently you have to know how to use a rope--go figure.)

The riders with the ropes go into the herd, and rope a small calf, dragging it out from the group. This is where I stepped in, my job was a holder, along with most of my friends. The holder intercepts the cow grabs it, wrestles it down onto it’s right side, and takes the rope off it's hooves. Then, someone would take the top, and someone would take the bottom (I preferred the bottom) you would hold one leg and pull it straight, then use your left leg to hold down the other leg. (As i'm demonstrating in the pictures up above.) The person at the top would have to hold down it’s upper legs, and head.

At this point all of the gross stuff happened. While being held down by us, the cow would be branded. I’ve got to be honest, there are few things in my life I have smelled that were worse than the smell of burning hair and flesh on the cow as it was getting branded. Yeeuch! Sometimes now, days later, I still get whiffs of it. It makes me wonder if the smell got imbedded in my nose somehow.

After the brand, the calf got immunized with two shots given with a large needle, it’s ear would have to get clipped or tagged, and the best part… You would have to look at the cow and shout out ‘Heiffer’ or ‘Bull!’ If it was a male cow--a bull if you will, someone with a knife would come around and castrate the cow cutting its… er, um... you know what's off. :)(Apparently they save those and cook them up later to eat, frying them into a delicacy called ‘Rocky Mountain Oysters’)

"Adrienne, care for an 'oyster?' Um, no thanks, I’ll stick with my chicken fingers, or hamburgers please."

Needless to say, this was quite the experience. By the end of the day I was covered in mud, blood and a greenish-grassy substance I would prefer to call mud. It came out of the cows though, and sure didn’t smell like mud. We were all exhausted, bruised and ready for a shower, but we had survived. (One friend even got kicked in the upper thigh by a mother cow not too pleased with the situation…ouch)

The rodeo that night was a lot of fun as well, it was a little hard to get too excited about it though, all of us were so tired we could barely stay awake. Probably one of the more subdued crowds that rodeo had seen.

Throughout the day of branding, I had implemented a few phrases into my dialog; ‘Well I’ll be…’ and ‘There’s a snake in my boots.’ I felt these phrases were only fitting considering the nature of what we were doing, and where we were.

Here are a few other phrases I think I will be slipping into casual conversation over the next few weeks:

• -Don’t squat on your Spurs
• -Dang, Young Whippersnapper
  
• -Never drink downstream from your horse
  
• -Well Butter my Butt and call me Biscuit
  
• -He's All Hat and No Cattle

I feel like I’ve earned this right to say them. Heck, I’ve branded cattle, I feel like I could do anything after this. I’m well on my way to moving to Panguitch Utah, buying me a horse, and settling down with my rancher husband to raise our chitlins' :)