Arizona republican., 1903-05-08
HINTS TO FARMERS
The Latest Paper From the Agricul-
 tural Experiment Station.

In the fall of 1S99 there were refer
 ences in some of the agricultural papers
 to the use in New Zealand and Austra-
 lia of a branding fluid which gave
 legibla brand but did not lessen the value of the hide for tanning purposes.
 In response to letter of inquiry the
 writer received the following communi-
 cation from the registrar of brands for Queensland, Australia: "A liquid branding material has been patented
 in New Zealand under the commercial
 designation of "Gibsons Branding Liq- uid.' I submittetd it to severe test
 in this colony in February last. but al-
 though the brands imprinted by its
 means were legible. it was found that when the animals were slaughtered and the hides tanned, the leather was | injured almost to an equal extent with that of the use of the fire brands. The | patenttaes still hope to perfect it SO that | the hair will be completely removed without injury to the true skin"
 In it's issue of January g. I9O1 the Breeders Gazette of Chicago called at | tention in its editorial columns to q combination of chemicals which it was claimed would take the place of the hot iron in branding cattle. Reports of
 the successful use of the fluid were said | to have come from New Zealand
 though conflicting reports as to it's use fulneSs were received from western 1 cattlemen. The chief advantage claim ed for it's use was that the value of the
 hide of the branded animal was not
 lessened for tanning purposes. The art icle in the Gazette appeared but one ! year later than the receipt of the letter
 from the registrar of brands In Austra-
 lia. The composition referred to ''con- sists of equal parts of barium sulphide
 and coal tar. preferably thinned by a mixture of American potash and water
 in equal parts by measure, and of spirits of turpentine each equal in
 measure to the original composition" A quantity of the mixture was pre-
 pared for the writer by the station chemist. Two calves were treated as directed by dipping an ordinary brand
 ing iron into the well mixed fluid and
 pressing it firmly against the skin or
 the animal. The result was that on
 neither animal was there a scab form ed over the surface of the attempted brand. The letters of the brand could not be made out even after clipping the | hair.
 Thinking to improve on the method
 suggested, wooden form was made re- sembling the branding iron but with
 much wider faced letters. nearly one half inch instead of three-sixteenths.
 So far as the application of the fiuIi was concerned, this appeared to work
 much better than the iron. Heavy scabs were formed over the whole sur face of the brand and it looked as though the operation had been d suc-
 cess. Upon the shedding of the scabs
 however, hair grew over a part of the
 brand leaving only detached bare spots
 Hon. Will c. Barnes of Dorsey, New Mexico. formerly an Arizona cattleman,
 has used this same branding fluid un- der range conditions and expressed him. self concerning its use as follows: For the man who, like myself. has from
 two to three hundred calves to brand
 at time. l can see no way of using it successfully. In branding time on my ranch We usually cut out from two to three hundred calves. put them into a lane in the corral, cutting calves into one pen and cows into another. One man grabs the calf by the right hind leg, another grabs the tail, gives a quick jerk and the calf is on his side with one man holding his hind legs and
 another on his neck. No sooner does he hit the ground than man is at him
 with the iron while at the same time
 another man marks and castrates, and this year a third man dehorned with
 clipper. With two pairs of men to throw, one to run the irons, one to cut and mark. and one to dehorn. making seven men in all. we have frequently branded out ninety calves in an hour and kept it up at that clip for three or four hours. Now I tried the branding fluid under such conditions: I first put it into a milkpan and used a cold iron. It took q long time for the fluid to penetrate the hair, and finally one vigorous calf kicked over my pan and spilled the fluid all over the legs of the man hold ing him. That settled the pan system and I got a brush and painted it on. Int worked all right but took time. But the worst feature of all was that crowding three or four hundred calves into a small pen that way, they smear ed and rubbed the stuff all over each other the sides of the corral and the mems clothes.
 Branding time on a big ranch is a hurry-up period everything is in a rush. To use the fluid means to take just about ten times as long as by the hot iron system"
 From the foregoing it would seem that up to January, 1900, a successful branding fluid was not known in New Zealand or Australia, and that the so- called New Zealand branding fluid, the use of which has since been advocated