Dark clouds hovered over Frenchtown, ominously threatening to make Sunday a wet, muddy exercise in endurance. Mike picked me up around nine, and we had gotten a coupla of breakfast burritos to pad our stomachs for the beer and whiskey that was sure to be flowing as the day wore on. We were both less than awake during the drive out, and we drove, mostly in silence, with the radio loud on the way to the ranch.

The road up to the place where the branding would take place was mercifully dry, and the dust kicked up behind us as men in trucks rushed around, completing last minute details. The cowhands were young – fourteen or fifteen, and they sat lazily on the back of a flatbed, waiting for the day to begin. The cows had already been separated, and were braying loudly at being removed from their young. The calves were in a pen, kicking up dust and fighting with one another. We parked the rig and got our gloves, then walked over to greet the others.

Joe was already giving orders to Lisa, the nurse who would be vaccinating the calves. The generator was not yet running, and the irons were still cold, but things seemed to be shaping up. Joe Senior was wearing his rubber boots, and was sharpening his knife for the castrations. There were men rigging up the fences and lubricating the gates, kids running around and a couple of Healers underfoot. It seemed like everyone already had a job to do, and I rolled a cigarette for later.

Soon, the calves were herded into the main holding pen by the cowhands and the first few were guided into the chute. The irons were hot – so hot that some of them had turned an almost white-brass looking color. Joe uses a hot iron for dehorning the calves He had four different sized de-horning iron and a straight iron in the fire. The main JB iron was an electric one. The cattle come down the chute, one at a time, and are guided into a cattle catching table, their head sticking out the front of the table. The table is then tipped to its side so that the calve is lying horizontally. Joe then tightens down on it so that the calve is held tightly in place by a metal contraption across its ribs. One guy stand on the calf’s right rear leg, and holds his left rear leg and tail with his other had, so that the calve is still (mostly still) to accept the iron.

“Bull!” someone yells, and Joe Senior comes out with his bucket and knife to cut off the calf’s balls. The testicles are collected in a bucket, washed, and fried up for snacks that an old guy brings around to us throughout the day. They are small, almost like popcorn shrimp, and are quite tasty, once you get past the idea that they are a calf’s balls. Washing the first bite down with whiskey is highly recommended.

I hand Joe the electric iron, and he makes the first impression. There are other ways to brand cattle that are allegedly more humane, but most ranchers in these parts use hot irons. When Joe is satisfied with the impression, he pats the burn mark, hands the electric iron to me, and I hand him the straight iron. While the calf is being branded, Lisa is busy vaccinating him. Joe hands the straight iron back to me, and I clean both irons with a wire brush, removing any hair or flesh that may be attached to it. If he needs to be de-horned, Joe grabs an iron for that purpose, burns out the horn, and hands the iron back to me. I place it back into the fire, which is run by propane and looks a little like this.

Sunday, we did between one hundred and one hundred and ten head of cattle. “Bull!” or “Heifer” was yelled by one of the old guys as each calf came into the cattle catcher. Someone sitting a little ways off in a lawn chair recorded the stats. The smell of shit and mud and burning hair hung heavily in the air. After the first twenty calves or so, everyone fell into a routine. I was careful to hand the iron to Joe upside-down with the cord out of the way, so that he didn’t have to move it much when he took it from me. The guy standing in front of me, the one standing on the calves’ back legs, was careful to grab hold of the tail and block the asshole so that none of us were sprayed with shit. Once in a while, we’d stop for a minute to shovel mud onto the table to clean the shit from it. The guys holding down the calves’ back legs switched out every five calves or so in order that they did not get tired.

The generator, combined with the flame from the propane was loud enough that I wore earplugs, and I was somewhat removed from the conversations that were going on between the men handling the calves. I heard bits and pieces of conversations, some related to the branding, others discussing past brandings, or even conversations about some of the ranchers’ families. The spirit of comradery between the men was thick enough that it was almost tangible. They paid little notice to the calf whose eyes were rolling back into his head as he felt the heat of the iron, felt the snip of the knife against his balls. And the sense of trust between the men that we all knew our job, and we would all perform our job safely, was also amazing to me. We worked with the precision of a machine.

After a calf would get branded, denutted, vaccinated and de-horned, Joe would tip the cattle-catcher table upright again, and release the gate. The recently branded calf would run out of the gate, up another chute, and be herded into a field with the waiting cows. This process took between 45 seconds and 120 seconds per animal.

The smell of burnt hair was almost overpowering, and the color of the smoke from the burnt hair was a pure white. Kids cracked beers and brought them to thirsty men. I was careful not to burn anyone. The hair on my right arm had completely burned off from standing so close to the fire. I burned myself slightly with the electric iron when one of the men holding down the calves’ legs backed into me as he avoided being kicked by the calf, but the burn was not a bad one.

It was around one o’clock when we finished, finally, and the generator was turned off, the propane valve closed, the irons allowed to cool. People congratulated each other, smoked cigarettes, drank whiskey, and loaded up into their rigs for a dinner catered by the man who runs one of the longest running bars in Missoula. It was a simple meal of burgers and brauts, because the previous day, Charlie had catered an even bigger branding at another man’s ranch, but we were all glad that the work was finished, no humans were hurt, and the rain had held off. People were laughing and drinking and telling stories, and it felt good to be a part of something. It was good too, being a meat eater, to have participated in such an event, to know the sacrifices these animals make for us, and to know that I look forward to my next juicy steak, that I was not put off by what some would consider suffering and inhumane treatment of these animals. Cattle have no other reason to exist in our society other than to provide us humans with food, and it is good to be a visceral part of that process, to know that steaks come from real animals who have real pain, and not from a well-lit supermarket for $5.95 a pound.