The West is Still Alive
And takes a lot of working horses and people


Branding in the Sandhills May of 2006

an exclusive for Working Horse World
by Jamie Gorwill

From the end of April to the first of June, ranchers in the Sandhills of western Nebraska band together for a successful branding season. Herd sizes range from hundreds to thousands but the job is always finished by noon, or close to.

Neighbors and family members either meet the night before for an old-fashioned cowboy campout complete with chuck wagon and campfire, or gather at sun-up to gather and corral the first bunch.  Cowboys are selected to vaccinate, castrate, brand, or the most popular job-rope.  The remaining hands team up in pairs to wrestle.  About midway into the first bunch, several hands head out horseback to start gathering the next bunch.

The men may do the branding, but it is the women back at the house that keep the help coming back year after year.  Neighbors gather early to prepare a meal that is sure to satisfy the many hungry workers.  To finish off the day, anyone still lingering circles around the nut bucket and goes to work cleaning for the annual nut fry to be held later in the summer.   

Although everyone looks forward to branding season, most will agree that the end is also welcome.  Wives are anxious to see their husbands in the daylight and the cowboys are anxious to get the cows out to summer ranges.

Then, fencing and haying season starts and everyone wishes they were back to branding again…..with good horses and great neighbors.

Jamie Gorwill grew up and later returned to the Nebraska Sandhills where she and her husband, Shane, and daughter, Payton enjoy living the western lifestyle and working alongside family and friends.

click on the pictures below for some fantastic memories

1 Shane & Payton Gorwill helping Mark Swanson gather at the Sillassen Ranch	2 Kirk Swanson reaches for a branding iron at the Coyote Lake branding	3 Some good dutch oven cookin
4 Horses relax after gathering the first bunch of Y-Six Livestock cows	5 Y-Six Livestock’s Jack Lowe tends to the nuts	6 Tory Swanson drags in a calf on a good IXI horse
7 Untacked at camp the night before the Y-Six branding	8 Everyone busy at work at Y-Six	9 Ropers at the Coyote Lake Ranch branding
10 Y-Six Livestock’s Wade Kramer heads out to camp with Hank & Elvis pulling the chuckwagon	11 The view from my front porch of the first bunch of cows at Y-Six	12 Ropers at the Y-Six
13 The crew at Coyote Lake Ranch	14 Camp the night before the Y-Six branding	15 Bringing them over the hill at Y-Six
A special thanks to Jamie for taking these pictures and letting the rest of us see something we thought was only left in the movies.  We'd love to come up from Kansas City for the next drive. Let us know.	16 Cousins Knight Kramer and Payton Gorwill