Freeze brand

[3] Freeze branding is most often used on mammalian livestock with smooth coats such as cattle, donkeys and horses although it has been used successfully on a wide variety of other mammals, as well as frogs, newts, snakes, fish and even crabs.

[9] Hot branding involves the use of an iron stamp heated to around 500 ºC (930 ºF), a temperature sufficient to destroy all three layers of an animal's skin and leave a permanent scar.

His success with a variety of subjects including cattle, dogs and squirrels and coolants such as dry ice and liquid nitrogen led him to promote the technique as Cryo-Branding.

[12] Beverly Pat Farrell, wife of the inventor, (both went by their middle names) would go on to create the popular Alpha-Angle Freeze Mark branding system in the early 1970s.

[16][17] Despite initial resistance from American cattle ranchers, who believed the white hair of a freeze brand could be dyed to confuse ownership, the technique has since become a popular means of marking animals for identification worldwide.

[18] Freeze branding was rapidly adopted by European livestock operations, as dry ice and liquid nitrogen are easily procured there thanks to denser infrastructure and transport networks.

The laser at the other end of the light channel was to be set in an adjustable frame a such that its beam could track across the width of the fiber bundle, allowing it to brand simple designs on the fish.

The greater mass of freeze brands was thought to render them more effective at destroying diseased or malignant tissue than conventional human cryotherapy, in which a coolant such as freon or liquid nitrogen is sprayed directly on the patient's skin.

Other conditions Farrell reported as successfully treated in this way include myxosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, squamous cell carcinoma, adenoma, melanoma, fibroma, equine sarcoids, atheroma, granuloma, capped hock hygroma, and chronic fistulous tracts .

Additionally, a freeze brand on a pigmented animal offers very high contrast year-round and increased legibility from a distance, an important time-saver in range work.

These may be difficult to procure, transport and store in remote areas (although liquid nitrogen is frequently on-hand at large ranching operations to preserve banked semen.)

[32] This is a very different scenario from hot branding, where animals are often tied by all four legs to the bars of their squeeze chute to prevent the flight response from causing a misbrand.

[29] The dry ice should be broken up into egg sized pieces, placed in a styrofoam container or styrofoam-insulated metal cooler and covered with at least three inches (8 cm) of alcohol.

Careful selection is important for two reasons: first, certain states and counties have various laws regarding legal brand placement and second, the arrangement of muscles beneath the skin determine whether the death of pigment cells occurs evenly.

This is required because the high thermal conductivity of cupronickel alloys ensures a warmer portion will rapidly heat cooler areas, leading to an uneven brand.

Once shaken free of coolant the brand is pressed to the animal's bare skin with a slight rocking motion for between six and sixty seconds, with between 35 and 45 pounds of force (16–20 kg; 170–200 N).

For this reason several irons are usually cooled at the same time to permit rapid branding of more than one animal or the convenient duplication of alphanumeric characters such as "AA" or "33".

c Irwin reports that keeping the iron stationary when branding a dolphin's dorsal fin, rather than rocking it as with livestock, produced a markedly clearer result.

In terms of vocalization, one hot-branded and two freeze-branded calves expressed distress during branding, although this may have been due to the absence of other cattle in the calf's field of view.

[103] In 1998 the same researchers followed up with a similar study comparing the effectiveness of thermal imagery to behavioral cues like tail flicking and vocalizing as a proxy for pain in steers.

This collection of unsanitary material as well as the ulcers it sometimes causes at the bottom of skin wrinkles are very attractive to gravid female blow flies, who seek out sheep with wounds and soiled fleeces to lay their eggs.

The success of animal rights movements in agitating for the procedure's curtailment has brought the proportion of Australian sheep ranchers who practice mulesing down to around 70% today.

[110] During steining hollow cupronickel clamping jaws about 4 inches (10 cm) long are used to pinch up rolls of skin beneath the tail and near the anus of a lamb.

[113] In 2020 a University of Melbourne researcher named Ellen Jongman was commissioned to study the issue by the company Steinfort formed to commercialize his technique, SteinfortAgVet.

They believe "any painful procedure to change the breech area should only be considered an interim, short-term solution that accompanies a breeding program that focusses on flystrike resistance, and is carried out only where absolutely necessary to manage at-risk sheep.

Farrell's Alpha Angle Freeze Mark was later adopted by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and the U.S. Forest Service as their preferred means of tracking captured wild equids.

[16] Starting in April 1978, all free-ranging mustangs and burros rounded up by the BLM or the U.S. Forest Service have been freeze branded on the left side of the neck using Farrell's Alpha-Angle system.

Solid line crossings in both hot and freeze branding irons frequently overbrand stock and can lead to tissue damage that blurs the final result.

Amphibians have proved one of the more successful applications, though freeze branding in scientific research remains relatively rare compared to traditional methods like tagging and radio tracking.

Previous methods of marking wild amphibians intended for recapture included hot branding, toe clipping, jaw tags, elastic waistbands and India ink scarification.

A feral horse ( mustang ) captured by the Bureau of Land Management and freeze branded using the alpha-angle system . From left to right the brand says the horse is registered to the federal government , was born in the year 2000 and carries the registration number 012790, indicating that it was branded at a BLM facility in Oregon.
A mustang with a freeze brand that reads BLM 09 051649. This indicates the horse belongs to the Federal government, was born in 2009 and branded at a BLM facility in Oregon.
A wild mustang freeze branded by the Bureau of Land Management in 2004. In this photo the brand has just been applied and the horse's skin is still frozen in the depression left by the cryobrand. The brand says the horse is registered to the federal government, was born in 1997 and carries the registration number 599810, indicating that it was branded at a BLM facility in Nevada.
A freeze-branded mustang . The brand says this horse is registered to the Federal Government, was born in the year 2001 and carries the registration number 598563, indicating that the horse was also branded at a BLM facility in Nevada.
Stages of healing after a pale horse ( red dun ) is freeze branded. The indentation left in the frozen skin can be seen in the first image while the complete loss of hair in the healed brand area is visible in the last.
Bardigiano pony with a freeze brand on its neck. The long white hairs display the accelerated growth triggered by the destruction of follicle melanocytes .
Mean plasma epinephrine concentrations in calves subjected to freeze, hot, or sham branding. All brands were administered at time zero.
Lamb undergoing steining in Dubbo , NSW .
Key to the International Alpha Angle system of branding used by the Bureau of Land Management to identify wild horses since the late 1970s. The system has since become popular among commercial livestock operations.
A cow with a numerical freeze brand on its hindquarters, most often used to track the animal during commercial rearing.