I appreciate the information, too!

I knew what one was because I'd seen the Temple Grandin movie and her squeeze box she made after having creating one to calm her autistic sensory needs. But, what I wanted to say was, thank you for taking about it the other day. I ended up tooling around in YouTube and she had the most wonderful talk about lots of things! From the autistic mind and how to appreciate them, get them help to fit into society, and of course, animals (she's an animal lover and proponent of animal rights). I learned so much and really enjoyed hearing her.

Her talk in Chicago

I'm glad you didn't show the branding iron. It kills me to think of calves being branded. Do you also castrate them at the same time? Get everything miserable done to them at once? I'm not saying this in a snippy way, I honestly want to know.

Is this gizmo a heating source for the branding iron? Really neat operation y'all have set up.

Thanks Tulsarose, It is our homemade branding pod. A propane fueled blowtorch fits in the one end, and the irons sit inside the pod to heat up.

Jasdip, we don't put an iron to our calves. When we brand the calves, we use a branding table, which lays the calves on their side at our hip height. We then vaccinate, put all their eartags, or Jewelry, as I prefer to call it, and we castrate the bull calves. Their eartags have all the information we need. The yearlings are last years heifer calves that we keep for breeding this year. They are now adults. We do need to put a brand on them, as they are going to be a part of our permanent herd, as well as vaccinate and new permanent eartags. But the babies, that we will be doing in a week or so, we believe do not need the added stress of a brand. Using the branding table is also faster and easier on them. The less stress we put on the calves, the healthier they are, the better rate of weight gain they have. We try and be as holistic as we can. And it does pay off in better calves at weaning.

All yearlings should have Bling! ☺ Thanks for the info.