Lake Mermaids

Twins Karlie and Kammie at Lake McConaughy in Ogallala, NE.

The Branding of a Lifetime

My childhood best friend, Haley Brady, working a branding on her boyfriends farm in Ogallala, Nebraska. June 22, 2019.

Jumping into random, unexpected situations isn’t an odd thing for me to do, so when my childhood best friend asked if I wanted to tag along to a cow branding while visiting her in Nebraska, the first thing I responded with was “can I photograph the whole thing?” Something amazing about being a photographer is getting to experience and learn about all kinds of new things, things you may not ever think of just trying on your own. In certain situations, you literally have permission to be voyeuristic, closely observe everything around you and document it as you wish. This isn’t the way most people experience a new situation, but as an avid people watcher, it’s the way I like to most of the time. I can pay attention to detail better, be more inquisitive, get up close and personal to something and learn all about it. Even as a girl born in the west, farms and ranching are way out of my element so I was excited for a new experience with something I have never been around before. I started to think of what the reality of a branding is really like though, and watching people burn symbols through an animal’s hide might be more of an “experience” than I had bargained for.

I am not a vegetarian by any means, but I am an empath, so seeing any sort of living thing in pain or distress eats away at me like it’s my own burden to bear. This is something I should have thought of before going to go watch a bunch of adorable calves get shoved against their will into a terrifying metal contraption, burned, given vaccines from a needle that looked like something from a sci-fi movie and then have their testicles trapped in the smallest, strongest rubber bands I have ever seen.

My stomach churned and my eyes welled up with tears as I watched these calves fight for their lives, making sounds I never want to hear again as their mothers surrounded the fenced off area confused, worried, and eager to be reunited with their babies. Im sure I sound dramatic, especially to any farmers or ranchers out there but this was a brand new experience. I had never witnessed something like this before and I went into it knowing about as much as one could know from a few western films. It’s not that I didn’t know this happened, I know that sadly much worse things happen to animals, and due to this being a privately owned farm, things are done as ethically as they possibly can be while still following FDA regulations. Even knowing that it still didn’t sit well with me and I am left with a dilemma of not really knowing how I feel about all of this. I don’t want to put down any farmers or ranchers, they do hard, respectable work and we need them in our world. But after witnessing this I am left with so many thoughts and questions. What’s ethical when it comes to how and where we get our meat from? Is it even ok that we raise animals for the sole purpose of killing them and eating them later? I know so many feel very strongly about these types of issues when it comes to both sides and there’s so much to consider and I really don’t know where I am at with it all. I still eat meat, ironically and humorous in a very sick way, I went and ate a burger right after this cow branding. I think about this often now though and am more mindful when it comes to eating meat. It’s a lot to process and a lot to think about and despite the some what traumatic experience this was for me it taught me something, gave me something to ponder, and let me experience something new and far out of my element.