Dakota Life
Brand Recognition
Clip | 3m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
Why some people hold onto a brand long after they leave the ranch life.
What's behind a brand? SDPB talks to a rancher, a longtime brand inspector and the Executive Director of the South Dakota Brand Board about why some people hold onto the family brand long after they've left the agricultural lifestyle.
Dakota Life is a local public television program presented by SDPB
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Dakota Life
Brand Recognition
Clip | 3m 47sVideo has Closed Captions
What's behind a brand? SDPB talks to a rancher, a longtime brand inspector and the Executive Director of the South Dakota Brand Board about why some people hold onto the family brand long after they've left the agricultural lifestyle.
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Learn Moreabout PBS online sponsorship(cattle mooing) (fire crackling) (light country music) - What makes a good brand?
A good fire and a good iron, and somebody that knows how to run it.
It's getting as many brands recorded anymore, and nobody goes through the trouble of changing the shape of brands or like that anymore.
They're gonna steal cattle, at least take the cattle, and rebrand them, or easier to take the money.
It's easier to steal paper than it is cattle.
So, the cattle theft business, I think, has went down over the years.
People don't keep track of their cattle as good as they used to, and I don't feel like over, as a whole, the people know how to brand as good as they used to, but that's just one man's opinion too.
(laughs) (light country music) (cattle mooing) - A good brand is one that goes on easily, won't blotch, and is very legible, very easy to read.
Just like everybody makes jokes about doctors' handwriting, it's the same thing with brands.
When you put a brand on, you want it to look crisp and legible so that you can see it from a distance.
The cow we got this morning, we were probably 50 yards away or maybe even 100 yards away, and I could read the brand on that cow's side and recognize it and say, "Oh yeah, that belongs to my neighbor."
When you look at this South Dakota State Brand Book, it's terribly thick and there's a lot of brands in there.
So when someone new comes into the industry and wants a brand, it's very hard to get a good brand that actually works.
And when I say works, it doesn't blotch, it's easy to put on, it's easy to read.
- This is a 1937 brand book and the size of it.
And then brand books are published every five years.
So this was the last brand book that we published in 2015.
And if you can see the difference in the thickness of where we've come and the number of brands that we have.
Brands have a lot of sentimental value to individuals because they identify that person's livestock.
And so there's a lot of brands where, you know, someone's grandfather may have used it and passed it down, but there's no longer anyone operating a ranch or in a need for it.
But because it was something that their grandfather had originally registered, they continued to keep the registration current.
(birds chirping) (cattle mooing) - It is a family crest and the old expression, "You ride for brand."
When you hire on to work for a ranch, you're loyal to that ranch.
That's your first loyalty.
You know, we don't work a lot of nine to five days.
There's certain times of the year where things slack off, but especially like during calving time and hanging time, I know in certain times in storms, during calving, blizzards, you basically are working 24 hours a day.
You might catch a cat nap now and then, but you're just, you're there till the job is done.
And so, if you're loyal to the brand, you don't shirk, you're proud of the fact that you can do this work and you do it.
- This is the first year in our survey, in our brand renewals we hope to find out how many brands out there that are not currently being applied to livestock.
So once we get done, we'll have all the survey question information, we'll be able to compile that and actually get a somewhat of accurate information on how many are actually being used and those that are just being kept for sentimental reasons.
(cattle mooing)
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Dakota Life is a local public television program presented by SDPB
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