On many cattle ranches, branding is one of the traditional rites of spring. Friends, neighbours and relatives bring their roping horses and lariats and get together for a day of hard work and fun.
But at the same time as the number of cattle on many ranches has grown, the available pool of strong hands to wrestle the calves has dwindled. What’s more, many of the cowboys aren’t as spry as they once were.
Nord Hill, who operates a 350 head ranch near Blackfoot, Idaho, invented a device in 1991 to make branding easier on the helpers. Since then, it has been introduced mainly by word of mouth across North America, and perhaps beyond.
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“I had a young son who could rope quite well. I just needed a way to stop those calves. I watched them drag by with their head in the air and I knew that if I had a piece of steel that was bent right, I could just drop it over their heads,” Hill said.
“I was just going to make a loop with a handle on one end to catch them behind the ears. But I couldn’t figure out how to get it off. So I just kept drawing and finally came up with the original concept.”
The Nordfork consists of a steel loop on one end and a steel handle on the other, with a scissors joint in the middle. To some, it looks a bit like a gate latch.
Hill began making them for neighbours about 15 years ago. This spring’s orders have been the most ever, with more than 200 sold so far, he said.
For $90 he throws in the stake and a short piece of rope. The user must supply his own rubber inner tube, which serves as a shock absorber.
Anyone with rudimentary iron working skills, a forge or acetylene torch and an anvil could hammer one out of scrap steel rod, but Hill said the Nordforks that he sells are perfectly proportioned and balanced for ease of use. He uses high test steel for the loop so it doesn’t bend out of shape.
“The biggest problem with people making their own is that they don’t work quite as well as mine. Then they think that all the forks don’t work,” he said.
“I have improved them vastly. My forks now are way better than my older forks. They’re balanced, they ride a calf really well and stay on. It’s really just a better fork.”
To use the device, a roper on horseback catches the calf by both hind feet and drags it to where the Nordfork, with attached rope and inner tube, is anchored to the ground with a long steel stake.
As the calf goes by, the ground man drops the Nordfork over the calf’s head. The rider continues pulling the calf until the rope is stretched tight and the calf falls over. The steel loop secures the calf’s head but doesn’t choke it.
Once down, the calf is immobilized for doctoring and branding. Determined strugglers can be kept still by standing on the lariat. To release the calf, the rider moves his horse forward to slacken the rope and then the ground man pulls the device off the calf’s head by lifting the handle. The calf kicks the lariat off its hind feet and rejoins the group.
Hill said this is better than the old method, which required one wrestler to grab the calf by a front leg and flip it and another to kneel on its neck. A firm grip is required to hold the leg back or the person performing the castration, branding or vaccination could receive a nasty kick in the teeth.
Roping calves by the hind feet is a finesse art that most cowboys enjoy, but wrestling is hard, tiring work. That makes ropers easy to find and wrestlers less so.
Hill said producers have told him that they can brand 750 calves in a day using 10 ropers and five forks. Maximum calf size for the Nordfork is about 300 pounds.
“I’ve had guys in Texas tell me that they can fork a 500 pounder, but it’s really hard on a calf that size to drag him. You can hurt your calf and hurt your horse. Horses don’t really like to drag that big of a calf,” he said.
“Even 300 lb. is a big calf.”
Hill said tipping tables and squeeze chutes work, but they take the fun out of branding calves. A squeeze chute can also pinch fingers or even break a hand.
“I’ve done that. But you know, you end up hating branding season. You don’t look forward to branding calves. It’s just work – hard work. And you have to hire the help to get it finished,” he said.
“This way, it’s more of a social occasion. Your neighbours will come over and help you.”
More information about the Nordfork can be found online via the Rhodes Feed website.
