A brand new season
By Betsy Ryan
Farmer Staff Writer
After spending hours roping calves, Morgan Myers jumped off her horse and picked up a calf testicle that had landed on her boot.
“I think this was meant to be my mid-afternoon snack,” laughed Myers as she grilled it up and ate it. “It’s a perk of the job.”
Myers is a McKenzie County extension agent who has showed up to brandings since she was a little girl in South Dakota. A friend of the Wolds and Thornes, Myers was asked to do the roping honors at the joint branding day this month.
Winton Wold, his son Blake and his son-in-law CJ Thorne all work together raising their cattle near Tobacco Gardens. Wold’s father, Milton, bought the land and began the family ranch in 1947. Since then, his children and grandchildren have been using his brand to mark their cattle. The brand is an upside down triangle with an M.
On this branding day, neighbors, friends and family all showed up to help the Wolds and Thornes get their calves ready for the summer.
The operation runs like a practiced and choreographed dance.
Someone on a horse ropes a calf in the corral. As the calf is dragged out, two wrestlers get the calf on the ground and hold it there while different people step in to vaccinate it, brand it with two symbols, spray insecticide on it and castrate the males.
From start to finish, one calf takes only a few minutes.
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