Although cattle branding in Arkansas has declined with the rise of ear tags, it still has its benefits. University of Arkansas Extension Beef Cattle Specialist and Associate Animal Science Department Head Tom Troxel noted economic hard times and the high value of cattle have made cattle theft a problem and “branding but can provide permanent proof of ownership.”
While some states – notably Texas, Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico require a brand to sell cattle, Arkansas is a brand free state and the practice is voluntary. Nevertheless, there are thousands of brands registered in the state Brand Book, according to Lewis Wray, equine educational compliance instructor for Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission. “If you would like to have a brand,” he said, “you simply contact Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission in Little Rock, Ark., and they provide you with the forms. You draw your brand and design it, and they will check to see if anyone else in the state has that same brand.” If not, it’s a $5 fee for registration, which needs to be renewed every 5 years.
Lewis, who made a presentation on state brand laws on Feb. 17 at the River Valley Beef Cattle and KOMA Conference in Conway, Ark., said the practice of branding goes all the way back to ancient Egypt. It was difficult, he explained, to convince someone that a “slick,” or unbranded animal was your property. Now, he said, “There are brands across the nation that are easily identifiable. You see the “Four Sixes,” you automatically know that it’s the Burnett ranch out of Oklahoma.” In Arkansas, the University of Arkansas has a unique UA brand, and the state prison system has “AP.”
At the same conference Earl Pepper, livestock supervisor for the Arkansas Department of Corrections provided a branding demonstration. There are two types of branding, Earl said, fire or hot iron branding, which he said is “quicker, more economical and probably easier to do. Then the other usual form of branding would be freeze branding, which is more expensive and more time consuming, and you’d be a little less certain of success with that.”
Some in the industry say branding reduces the value of cattle hides; while Earl said, “I’ve not ever seen anyone get more for a cow that wasn’t branded than they did for one that was branded,” he added there have undoubtedly been cases where that has occurred.
But Earl believes branding is a good idea, and offered this anecdote – a friend from the Ft. Smith, Ark., area recently had several calves get out. They ended up commingling with another rancher’s cattle, and the other rancher identified the brands and called him to tell him he’d bring the lost calves back up to his place. “So,” Earl concluded, “there are advantages to branding cattle.”
