ELLENSBURG – The cattle brand, in this age of mad cow disease and the threat of bioterrorism, may go by the wayside if scannable data chips in livestock ear tags or implanted under the skin of animals become a widespread requirement.
Despite the onslaught of change, there are many who hope the branding iron, and the Western heritage it reflects, stays alive as it has for centuries.
People in Kittitas County have registered 448 brands for cattle and horses with the state Department of Agriculture. There are 6,334 registered brands in Washington. And just because people register brands, doesn’t mean they use them. Some merely carry on a Western tradition.
“I don’t really think we’ll see the end of the brand,” said John Eaton, president of the Kittitas County Cattlemen’s Association. “It will stick around, at least, because of the tradition.”
Branding as a means of identifying ownership of livestock no longer is only by heating the branding iron in a hot campfire. Eaton said electrically heated irons are often used and many use propane burners.
Some use liquid nitrogen to cool the iron to 300 degrees below zero to put a brand on the animal’s hide, he said.
Some ranchers elect not to use brands and rely on numbered or coded ear tags. Others use tattoos on ears.
“Most people with a larger number of cattle want a definite way to legally identify their cattle,” Eaton said. “It’s like the owner’s license plate on cars. But it sure predates license plates.”
Washington’s oldest brand
The oldest state-registered cattle brand is held by the Schnebly family of the Fairview area northeast of Ellensburg.
The family’s Bar Balloon was registered in the Washington Territory on June 11, 1868. Burned onto on a piece of leather, it was handed in by David H. Schnebly to territorial officials in Walla Walla.
The old brand is used in the cattle operation now run by brothers Fred, Jim and Todd Schnebly.
Fred doesn’t know if the shape of the brand – a balloon-shaped bulge climbing from a horizontal bar – is symbolic of something.
“I would definitely say, though, we have a sense of pride in its longevity in the family and in the cattle industry,” Fred said. “It shows family survival through some tough times and change. It also reflects ownership and pride in the quality of product we produce.”
Fred’s great-great-great-grandfather, David Schnebly, was living in the Oregon Territory and the Willamette Valley when he married into the Painter family, which had come from Missouri in 1848. In 1860 he sold his newspaper at Twin City, Ore., and moved to the Walla Walla area to put together a cattle herd.
“It’s believed the Bar Balloon is a very old Painter family brand that came West with the Painter family,” Fred said.
In 1871, the sons of David Schnebly, Philip and Charles, came to the Kittitas Valley to establish a cattle operation and brought the brand with them. Their father joined them in the valley in 1883. David Schnebly established the Kittitas Localizer, the forerunner of the Daily Record.
“A brand can be something handed down generation to generation,” Fred said.
Branding through generations
Cattleman Rob Acheson’s brand, called the 7 Open A, has a more recent history.
Acheson was raised on Kodiak Island in Alaska, where he worked on cattle ranches and his family had a small herd. His father ran a store in town and did some work with the herd.
The family brand at that time was 7A, symbolizing seven Acheson family members: Mom and Dad, four sisters and Rob. Rob’s grandfather brought cattle to Alaska in 1898.
After the tsunami from the 1964 Alaska earthquake destroyed the store, the family looked for a place in the Lower 48 to resettle into the ranching industry. They chose the Kittitas Valley in 1965.
“The 7A brand was already taken in the state register,” Rob said. “So we took out the little cross bar on the A, opening it up. That made it the 7 Open A.”
He doesn’t brand the calves he intends to sell, only the cattle on the ranch used for replenishing his herd. Unbranded cattle use ear tags.
“I hope branding is here to stay, but you never know with the amazing electronic things they’re coming up with. Branding is still very versatile and can be very visible if done right.”
Sam Kayser, whose family has been ranching northeast of Ellensburg since 1966, said he discovered something about his brand, the Heart Hanging J, just recently.
He asked Fred’s father, Henry Schnebly, about the brand that is a heart with a J suspended from the bottom.
“It looks like it could be a very old brand dating back to 1820 in Pennsylvania,” Kayser said. “I didn’t realize there was that much history in it.”
A family named Moore came from Pennsylvania with the brand in 1820 to what would later become the Oregon Territory. A member of the family later married into the Schnebly-Adams family. The brand may have been given to Phil Adams, a nephew of Phil and Charles Schnebly.
Adams likely was associated with the brothers and could have brought the brand to the Kittitas Valley around the same time the brothers arrived in 1871. The Kayser family bought Adams family property for ranching in 1966.
When Kayser married in 1980, he obtained the Heart Hanging J from Louie Meyer, who had worked for the Adams in the 1930s.
He said he hopes branding stays around, but it could be replaced.
“It’s part of our Western culture,” Kayser said. “Since I was a kid branding time was a time when neighbors helped neighbors with their calves. It was kind of a festive, neighborly time of helping each other.
“I guess I’d like to see it continue,” he said.
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