Branding: OSU working to settle the debate of the ages

Each spring, and generally fall, ranchers collect across the fireplace to mark their possession on their calves.
That is the time when calves are vaccinated, disbudded — their horn development plates are cauterized to stop additional development ­— and, if it’s going to be a non-breeding bull, castrated.
Till current years, ranchers roped calves to seize and restrain them whereas they had been branded. However the introduction of the squeeze chute and calf desk drastically modified how livestock are dealt with, igniting a debate: which is healthier, the calf desk or roping at branding time?
There hasn’t been analysis of those practices to shine gentle on the talk. Till now.
A staff of researchers — Sergio Arispe, Oregon State College assistant professor and Extension livestock specialist, Wade Black and Jared Higby from Treasure Valley Neighborhood School, and myself, Chris Schachtschneider OSU assistant professor and Extension specialist in Umatilla and Morrow counties — determined to shed some gentle on the topic.
We evaluated cortisol ranges in 48 calves throughout 4 of the most typical restraint strategies. We selected to check for cortisol as a result of it’s often known as the “stress hormone” — its ranges within the physique point out the discomfort of a person animal. We took blood samples every week earlier than branding. We then sorted cow/calf pairs into 4 therapy teams.
In three of the teams, we separated the cows and calves with three capture-and-restraint strategies: calf desk, heel-only roping, and head-and-heel roping. Within the fourth group, we saved the calves and cows bunched collectively within the rodear. We roped the calves out of the rodear with head-and-heel roping, as was historically accomplished earlier than corrals had been distinguished.
It’s necessary to notice that the dealing with crew was the identical all through the examine to reduce handler bias. They had been all specialists within the fields of stockmanship, horsemanship and ranch roping.
All the calves on this venture had been captured, and correctly restrained, earlier than they had been branded with a sizzling iron, vaccinated, castrated, and disbudded earlier than we collected a second spherical of blood samples. The samples had been processed at Texas A&M College.

CORTISOL LEVELS
What we discovered was that the post-branding cortisol ranges in calves nearly doubled within the three teams during which they had been separated from their moms. The post-branding cortisol ranges had been decrease within the calves during which they stayed along with their moms (baseline blood assortment requires some dealing with and separation from cows).
This information means that the bodily act of branding, vaccinations, castration or disbudding might not be as tense to calves because the psychological stress from being separated from their mom. We all know that livestock have advanced to higher tolerate ache than people, in an effort to escape predators, even after being bitten, reduce or scratched. However the psychological stress of separation on calves of this dimension shouldn’t be one thing that happens in nature.
We need to emphasize that the crew used on this venture had been chosen as a result of they’re able to work within the herd calmly and cord successfully. Handlers/ropers saved the animals calm and didn’t miss fairly often, so these elements should be considered together with the non-peer reviewed facet of this venture. This was additionally a venture on one ranch with a small pattern dimension. With a view to totally perceive the which means of this data, extra research should be carried out.
In conclusion, this venture suggests two questions that should be higher understood. First, does roping inherently trigger extra stress for cattle? Second, if calves should be separated, will minimizing that separation scale back calf, and herd, stress general?
The examine was funded with a $12,500 grant from the Agricultural Analysis Basis.

-Schachtschneider is an Oregon State College assistant professor and Extension specialist in Umatilla and Morrow counties.