Modern Usage
Free-range or open-range grazing is less common today than in the past. However, branding still has its uses. The main purpose is in proving ownership of lost or stolen animals. Many western US states have strict laws regarding brands, including brand registration, and require brand inspections. In many cases, a brand on an animal is considered prima facie proof of ownership. (See Brand Book)
In the hides and leather industry, brands are treated as a defect, and can diminish the value of hides. This industry has a number of traditional terms relating to the type of brand on a hide. "Colorado branded" (slang "Collie") refers to placement of a brand on the side of an animal, although this does not necessarily indicate the animal is from Colorado. "Butt branded" refers to a hide which has had a brand placed on the portion of the skin covering the rump area of the animal. A cleanskin animal is one without a brand while the skin without a brand is native.
Outside of the livestock industry, hot branding was used in 2003 by tortoise researchers to provide a permanent means of unique identification of individual Galapagos tortoises being studied. In this case, the brand was applied to the rear of the tortoises' shells. This technique has since been superseded by implanted PIT microchips (combined with ID numbers painted on the shell).
Read more about this topic: Livestock Branding
Famous quotes containing the words modern and/or usage:
“I lately met with an old volume from a London bookshop, containing the Greek Minor Poets, and it was a pleasure to read once more only the words Orpheus, Linus, Musæus,—those faint poetic sounds and echoes of a name, dying away on the ears of us modern men; and those hardly more substantial sounds, Mimnermus, Ibycus, Alcæus, Stesichorus, Menander. They lived not in vain. We can converse with these bodiless fames without reserve or personality.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Pythagoras, Locke, Socrates—but pages
Might be filled up, as vainly as before,
With the sad usage of all sorts of sages,
Who in his life-time, each was deemed a bore!
The loftiest minds outrun their tardy ages.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)