Brands have been used to mark livestock ownership long before Texans started driving cattle north to make their fortunes. Egyptians branded oxen with hieroglyphics, ancient Greeks and Romans marked livestock with a hot iron, and Hernando Cortez introduced branding from Spain to the New World in 1541.

And to this day, the brand is still proof of livestock ownership in Texas.

Of course, the idea here came from open ranges where cattle herds might mix somewhere between Plano and the Red River, so brands turned out to be an easy way on horseback to separate the Rocking T from Lazy S Ranch stock. Rustlers would try to alter certain brands if they could to sell on the market without getting sideways with the law, but for the most part in this neck of the woods – range, that is – Collin County cattle raisers used some pretty standard, easy-to-read brands.

In Collin County’s old brand book, we found some stock raisers even had registered marks for their turkeys, as those birds were known to roam about a bit, too. But mostly, of course, the trade was cattle, and they also notched ears in specific locations and had to specify where their brands were located (right hip, left hip, etc.). 

For greenhorns – that is, the uninitiated -- reading a brand can be tricky, but there are a few guidelines that can help make the hieroglyphics of branding easier to read. Here’s a crash course in callin’ a brand. Special thanks go out to Lee Raine’s Cowboy Showcase, and Larry Gray of the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association for their sage advice and interpretation of these old west marks.

For starters, brands are composed of capital letters of the alphabet, numerals, pictures, and characters such as a slash  /, circle  O, half-circle , cross +, _bar, etc.,  with many twists and turns in between. There are a few generally accepted rules for reading brands:

• Read from the left to the right as ML (M L).
• Read from the top to the bottom as (bar m).
• When the brand is enclosed, it is read from the outside to the inside as(circle S).

Still, not all cattle folk agree on every brand calling method, but here are some other standards:

• If a letter or symbol is made backwards from its normal position, it's read as a “reverse F” or whatever other letter it might be.
• A letter partially over on its face or back is said to be “tumbling.”
• If a letter lies horizontally on its face or back, it is called “lazy.”
• An upside down, backwards letter is sometimes called “crazy.”
• Letters with a curving flare at the top and rounded angles are called “running.”
• Adding a dash to the left and one to the right at the top, you have a "flying" letter.
• Add legs and it becomes a “walking” letter.
• Letters or symbols formed together are called “connected,” except when one is below the other, then the lower symbol is said to be “swinging.”
• Triangles were frequently used in late 19th-century brands, and an open triangle was a "rafter."

Letters can be used singly, joined, or in combinations.

They can be upright, XIT ;  lying down or "lazy," (lazy  S);

connected ( V B connected), (V B combined);

reversed, (reverse B);  or hanging  (V hanging S).

 
Figures or numbers are used in the same way as the letters.
Picture brands are usually used alone, for example (ladder)  or
(rising sun).

Now that’s the crash course.

Think you’re ready to “call” a brand? 

Here’s a list of Collin County livestock brands registered here in the latter half of the 19th century through the 1930’s. We’ll start out easy, and work our way up to the harder ones. We’ll post a link to the answers at the bottom of this page, but no peekin,’ folks.

Part I: Common Brands. These should be a walk on the range.

Part II: Sometimes a symbol is all you need, and “X” really does mark the spot.

Part III: If you put these together correctly, you would do well out on the range. Keep in mind, though, most owners of these brands aren’t around to confirm our experts’ interpretations of their marks. That means some of these could be open to interpretation or another meaning.

Well, that just about does it. If you want to view more brands stored on the County Clerk’s new online brand registration page, go here. There are more than 350 active brands in Collin County right now. See you on down the trail.

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