Cattle Brands

Vocabulary

Brand book - Lists of all registered brands including: picture of the brand, owner's name, year brand was registered, and ranch and city.
Brand inspectors - Men who work at auctions to make sure brands are registered.
Brand - A mark made by burning with a hot iron to legally determine ownership, to deter thieves, and to identify cattle.
Branding iron - Metal with identification figure on its end. It is heated in a fire and then used to burn hair permanently off of cattle.
Ear tag - Tag with identification number put on an animal's ear.
Electric brand - Brand done with electric branding iron.
Mavericks - Unbranded animals.
Running iron - Branding iron with point on its end. It is used like a pen to change brands.
Rustlers - People who steal cattle.

Brand Rules:

Brands are read left to right, top to bottom, and outside to inside.
Letters and numbers represent letters and numbers (a brand that looks like this 112 would be read one hundred twelve; a brand that looks like this 81A would be read eighty-one A).
Letters are always capital letters.
A letter laid on its side is called a lazy letter. For instance, the letter R laying on its side would be read lazy R.
An upside down letter is read as crazy (upside down A, crazy A).
A backwards letter is read as reverse (reverse C).
Some letters can't be crazy or reverse, because then they would look like another letter, such as M W H I X.
A cursive letter made without lifting up the pencil is read as running (cursive R read as running R).
Pictures can be used such as quarter moon, half moon, sun, diamond, triangle, heart (hearts can also be lazy or crazy), and #.
"-" is read as bar; "_____" is read as rail; "/" is read as slash.
You could have a box with a letter or number in it (read as box 2).

Cattle Brand Collage taken from Devil’s Rope Museum.

Design Your Own Cattle Brand!

Directions: Design your cattle brand, then quietly read one of the books at the reading table.

You must do the following 4 things to create your brand (1 point each)

Once all the brands are designed, we will put them all together to make a quilt and play a game with it.