Cattle Talk : Cattle Branding

What is a Brand?

A brand is an identifying marker on an animal that can signal who the animal’s owner is. This practice is not native to the Americas; in fact, there have been depictions of branding dating back 4000 years to an Egyptian tomb portraying such scenes (Dary, N.A.). Over the years, this practice was brought into Texas via the Spanish, who would use a hot iron to leave their identifying mark on the cattle. Some of the first cattle brands were first used in Mexico when the Spanish began settling the lands and expanding out from Mexico City with missionaries (Dary, N.A.). Most of the early brands appeared in counties closer to the Texas coast.

Once the Spanish cattle industry expanded in Texas, all cattle were ordered to be branded (Dary, N.A.). In the early years, each rancher would have created their own brand. The brand wasn’t always in letter form but could have also been made with pictographs and placements of the brand on the cattle. Once the Republic of Texas was formed, this law was not enforced (Dary, N.A.). Then in 1848, brands had to be registered with the county clerk to provide “legal” ownership over the animal. Meaning if the owner of the cattle got into a dispute with their neighbor over whose cattle it was. If the cow was not branded with a registered brand, he could lose the cattle. Many counties out in western Texas did not even have brand registration until the 1870s-1880s (Dary, N.A.).

Nowadays, various states have laws on brand registration. Though it is not as popular as it was back then because we now have tagging (ear tag), DNA testing, and various other modern measures to help prevent theft (Stamp, 2013). Some brands we see today, such as the King’s Ranch brand up in the Dallas Fort Worth area.

Ways to Brand

Today there are three different ways in which you can brand cattle (Note: Horses can also be branded using similar methods.)

Hot iron branding: Historical method: This method required a hot iron rod with your brand that would be burned into the cattle’s hide, scaring the brand into their skin.

Electric branding: Works in a similar fashion to a hot iron, but it is powered by electricity to generate heat instead of fire.

Freeze branding: This does not burn the animals, but rather uses a coolant apparatus that will destroy any pigmentation in that area, creating a permanent discolored mark in the shape of the owner’s brand.

Examples of Brands used in Texas. Photo was taken from

TSHA | Cattle Brands (tshaonline.org)

Types of Brands (GISMAP)

When you compare the ArcGIS map below of the early branding counties to the present-day cattle population map from generated by the USDA-National Agriculture Statistics Service, you will see that most of the early pre-1850s brands were appearing closer to the Texas coast, as mentioned above. Then in the latter half of the 1800s, we start to see cattle brands appearing in counties in north and west Texas. This contrasts with the present-day cattle population in Texas, where most of the heavy cattle populations appear in the panhandle of Texas and a bit in the black land prairies of Texas. Today, the early counties that had brands (along the coast) still have cattle populations; however, with the expansion of cities like Houston, the population of cattle has dropped.

Figure 1: Picture made in ArcGIS using known cattle brands from the 1880s. The dark green dots are brands from the pre1850s and the orange dots are well-known brands from 1847-1910.