Why do German breeders still burn their babies?

The_Hooligan said:
I dont agree with any if you, it is done for a purpose, and Branding/Freeze Marking/Chipping is all painful and all have reasons. if you have ever witnessed it you will know that it is done and treated as well as is possible,
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I've had mine freezemarked and I can honestly say, she didn't even notice. And I was watching her like a hawk to make sure I wasn't being an evil mother and there wasn't the slightest register of pain or even feeling.
 
Ive been with 2 youngsters to have them graded and branded the first time I was worryed that it was cruel first time not sure it wether or not it hurt ..then the next time with the other at a differnt place im convinsed he didnt even notice!!! when he was being done or after,
realy im a bit fluffy and care deeply about horse welfare, what im trying to say is it seems a very minor issue and nothing to worry about.... IMHO.....
 
Cptrayes.

You'll have a go at bakedbean for branding ponies.

But you won't argue the fact that passports and microchips, your one argument against branding, aren't as useless as a chocolate teapot when it comes to identifying horses.

You also won't argue the fact that branding and freezemarking are both done at temperatures which SHOULD kill the nerves before any skin damage is done.

All I have to say on the matter is, if you had to have "baby ponies" held down whilst you had them burnt and it caused them agony then YOU and YOU ALONE are the cruel party, as the process obviously isn't being adhered to correctly.
 
maggiesmum said:
She didn't say it was alright in some circumstances, she said she could see where the justification is in branding a wild pony for proof of ownership purposes, she quite clearly said she didn't think it was alright to do it.

I agree, its not right full stop BUT to do it in the name of 'fashion' or 'status' or 'tradition' is ridiculous.

Hooligan - you seriously think that branding, freezemarking and micro chipping all hurt the same amount? I take it you never watched jamie oliver (was it him or was it that horsy woman, or did JO do the castrating?? ) branding cattle in america? they hog tie them to brand them, why if it doesn't hurt??
Are you really saying that given the choice between having a scalding hot bar held on your arm OR being injected with a needle you really wouldn't mind which it was as they hurt the same!!


CPT - bet you've not been called a 'fluffy bunny' in a while ROFL
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Branding is not a status symbol or a fashion thing - that is just a ridiculous statement.

Cattle are indeed hog tied to be branded, horses are not. The reason they hog tie cattle is because they are not halter trained - that is the fundamental fact.

Freeze marking is just as painful as hot branding - also fact.
 
Serenity087 said:
Cptrayes.

You'll have a go at bakedbean for branding ponies.

But you won't argue the fact that passports and microchips, your one argument against branding, aren't as useless as a chocolate teapot when it comes to identifying horses.

You also won't argue the fact that branding and freezemarking are both done at temperatures which SHOULD kill the nerves before any skin damage is done.

All I have to say on the matter is, if you had to have "baby ponies" held down whilst you had them burnt and it caused them agony then YOU and YOU ALONE are the cruel party, as the process obviously isn't being adhered to correctly.
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I don't think that Cptrayes had her horse branded, i imagine it was done before she bought it.
 
bakedbean said:
its the same with hot branding ... freezemarking is the opposite end of the pain threshold..

very cold/very hot have the same effect on skin/nerve endings
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That is absolute rubbish. Have you ever burnt yourself with an iron, and had a wart frozen off? The two do not compare.

I'll bet you could not hot brand the second number on a horse held with a lead rope like you can brand a second freezemarked number.
 
I think that pain thresholds differ from horse to horse. We had three freeze branded - two stood perfectly, didn't blink an eye - the third went totally ballistic, I still have the scars! We had to fully sedate her in the end.
 
In answer to J1ffy, re your boy being freeze branded I am wondering it that is because he is bay, and that is why branding is overall preferred because if you brand a grey horse it is still visible, but if you fm him then you have to keep it clipped to be seen. :confused: just a musing!
 
Grey horses are freeze branded for twice as long so the brand shows up - it completely kills the hair.

How that is more humane than branding in the eyes of the bunny huggers is beyond me.

Just watched a youtube vid of a little exmoor being branded. It's actually pretty awful, she isn't restrained properly and manages to get her leg stuck over the barrier kicking out. But she does not get upset until the smoke cloud (which smells of burning flesh) reaches her nose for all three brands.
What stood out though is the fact she was also microchipped and it took the woman a good minute to find the chip!

A brand is there, for all to see. A chip goes missing, migrates. A passport can be forged.

Which one is crueller in the long run when a horses entire medical history is wiped out in an instant?
 
bakedbean said:
this just shows you know feck all about branding..

a brand, unlike freezemarking, is done "in one"..so your "argument" doesnt stack up love.. LOL
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Oh dear, another person who can't follow logic.

I know hot branding is done in one. What I am saying is that if it was NOT done in one, as my horse's freeze marks were not done in one, then I doubt you could do the other three letters without restraining the horse more than by holding it on a lead rope.

Apart from anything, horses fear the smell of burning, never mind the burning of their own skin.

The hot-enough iron is an interesting argument from people who have clearly never burnt themselves on something really hot like welding. First, it hurts, for a very short time, like crazy. Then it is dead. Then the nerve endings start to regenerate and pain can go on for weeks.

My experience of watching freeze marking of two dark horses was that it was only applied long enough to kill the hair colour in the follicle, not the follicle itself or any nerve endings, and that discomfort was limited to twitching for a few days. I recall that I could ride the horse on the mark after less than a week. For grey horses, the entire follicle has to be killed, of course, but I still do not believe, having had bits frozen off myself, that it hurts as much, or for as long afterwards, as using heat to do it.

This argument is reminding me more and more of the incredible fight that went on and on and on to prevent the banning of docking dogs, and earlier in history, of docking horses.
 
Serenity087 said:
Grey horses are freeze branded for twice as long so the brand shows up - it completely kills the hair.

How that is more humane than branding in the eyes of the bunny huggers is beyond me.

Just watched a youtube vid of a little exmoor being branded. It's actually pretty awful, she isn't restrained properly and manages to get her leg stuck over the barrier kicking out. But she does not get upset until the smoke cloud (which smells of burning flesh) reaches her nose for all three brands.
What stood out though is the fact she was also microchipped and it took the woman a good minute to find the chip!

A brand is there, for all to see. A chip goes missing, migrates. A passport can be forged.

Which one is crueller in the long run when a horses entire medical history is wiped out in an instant?
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Why can a brand not be forged? My husband could copy the brand my horse has with no problem and we could use his blowtorch to heat it up red hot and forge a brand easily.

And what on earth do you think a brand does, other than a unique identifier brand like a freezemark, to safeguard a horse's medical history?

How do you think a brand in any way replaces the unique identifier of a chip? If chips are good enough for racehorses why are they not good enough for German warmbloods?

And what problem does taking a while to find a chip in a domestic riding horse cause? I watched a similar video just now of branding Exmoors and the female vet found the chip with one wave of the scanner. I have had a horse whose chip failed and could not be found on a vetting. He was a KWPN as well bred as the Westphalian I have who is branded, yet he had no brand. If KWPN don't need one, why do the German breed societies??

I don't know about fluffy bunny but there's an awful lot of woolly thinking going on with this subject :)
 
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Well the warmblood foals I have seen hot branded have not been distressed. But they have been well handled youngsters. They were certainly not held down; just stood nicely in a headcoller. None of mine were lame or sore afterwards and the brand site just developed a little scab that quickly fell off. As regards identification, some hot brands do show up more than others. One mare, I could only see her brand with a summer coat at a certain angle. You would never see it with her winter coat. Freeze branding similarly should not be problematic, and of course is a more reliable identification.

Funnily enough, although Germany may still hot brand - I read that since 2002 I it has been illegal to trim the whiskers off horses. Many people do that here without a second thought, despite whiskers playing an important role for a horse. We all have different views on what is or isn't unkind. Where I live now dogs are docked, ears are cropped and the fighting dogs have their ears cut off completly :mad:
 
Very interesting Hollycat, thankyou for that. I found a video on uTube where the foals were pretty unconcerned too, but it was by the German horse industry so it's good to hear from someone who was there at the time (and the other person who saw her foal(s) done too).

Is it REALLY illegal to trim whiskers? How amazing. I don't trim mine. (ooh, more fluffy bunny evidence, I must just go kick a Shetland to prove people wrong (in joke for those who know :))
 
Serenity087 said:
There is only one youtube video of exmoors being branded... and that is not "one swipe of a scanner". you even hear her say "It's not very sensitive" before reswiping and picking it up!
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Well if it;s the same video it takes her nowhere near a minute to find it after she injects it.

And even if it did SO WHAT?

later edit.
This is the video I saw.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QwesW0akdY

She injects at 9.22.01 and finds the chip on the second attempt at 9.23.20

19 seconds, under a third of the time you said, so can we assume everything else you say is to the same level of accuracy?

ps you will note that the Pony is chipped as well as branded - in other words the branding does not give sufficient unique identification or chipping would be superfluous.
 
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The brandings I have seen done were in the UK, as British bred trakehners, hanovarians etc are branded. I think you get the choice of whether to brand or not. I suspect the branding irons used these days are slimmer. I certainly remember the 1st german warmbloods in the UK 25 years ago having huge brands with a lot of hair loss, and when watching the SJ on TV you could clearly see the branded horses. Now the brands are not very obvious. As I said with my british bred hano mare the brand was hardly visable.

The whisker trimming stuff I read during a course on ethology and the importance of whiskers to horses - part of my vet med course material. I don't have a source though - I am sure the German HHO members will know if this is correct or not.
 
Molly'sMama said:
Probably stupid q but- With the forest ponies, why can't they just freezemark them ? They have to catch them and hold them still etc - or does freezemarking hurt as well? XxX
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Foals in NZ are freeze branded, Standerdbreds on the neck and TB and other breeds on both shoulders. Near side is the stud or vet brand, on the other there are two sets of numbers one over the other, the top one identifies the actual foal the bottom the last digit of the year of birth. So a horse with 25 over a 4 was either born in 2004, 1994 or 1984 - does help a great deal with ageing.

When it ws decided to change to freeze from hot branding there was a lot of complaints from the showing fraternity as the majority of show horses in NZ are TB's. Purely because the brands show so much because they are white. TB racing changed it to freeze branding because it was easier to see than hot brands on raceday.

Freeze branding hurts for a while but wears off quite quickly because the skin isn't broken. The brand then takes a coat change to actually show white. Mine are branded with just the last number of the year they were born, mainly because I haven't yet decided on my studs brand an I only breed one foal a year, I also wait until they are older so the brand doesn't grow too big. My foals are sedated by the vet but the standardbreds at the stud where I worked were held tight by a beefy Kiwi in a crush and then the skin shaved - with just a razor blade and then branded. You could see the marks swell immediately after but within 30 mins the marks would almost have gone.
 
Hollycat, ref the size,


I guess that's why I react so strongly to my boy's brand. It's huge. Far, far bigger than necessary. It was probably done in two goes, maybe even three - the cupcake (8-9 inches high, c 5 inches wide) then the number 18.

It just seems so unnecessary. It's clear from the videos that some horses find it extremely distressing, but mine certainly hasn't been noticeably affected by it if he got upset at the time.


Interesting about NZ Evelyn, thanks.

Sportznite I wonder if that is a viable alternative? From what I understand of a number tattoo, it would be done in one quick punch like a date-stamp and over. I don't know if that's legal or ever been considered, do you?
 
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Amaranta said:
Branding is not a status symbol or a fashion thing - that is just a ridiculous statement.

Cattle are indeed hog tied to be branded, horses are not. The reason they hog tie cattle is because they are not halter trained - that is the fundamental fact.

Freeze marking is just as painful as hot branding - also fact.
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So branding an expensively bred warmblood has nothing to do with status??? Do they brand the less well bred ones? And if it has has no relation to status that would suggest its meaningless so why bother? and in that case why do people advertise a horse as branded??

Freezemarking is just as painful as hot branding - Now thats a ridiculous statement!!

I know lets test the theory - if it doesn't hurt surely you'll be happy to volunteer to try them both and report back on whether they do indeed hurt the same?
And as a bonus if a computer bug wipes out all the NHS and social security records then we'll still know who you are won't we??
 
cptrayes said:
I am talking about cruelty for no purpose whatsoever. I find it very sad that the lovely trusting creature that I have in my stable was once held down and deliberately burned. I think that it should be banned except where it is required to identify ownership in feral herds, where it seems to me to be the lesser of two evils - freeze branding takes a long time and could cause a wild foal even more distress that hot iron branding.
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Unfortunately there are rogues out there that will tell you the horse is by so & so out of so & so and unless there is a brand that can be traced you have no way of believing them.

I once briefly worked at a Leopard spotted horse stud - they had one horse that was being used instead of one that had died - we were told never to mention this. The one that had died was a well used stud horse and the new one just one of similar size & shape. No way for the outsider to identify it.

Here as TB's have a stud brand we notice the different types and know that the breeding is from a big stud with their own brand or is from a small stud that uses the vets brand.

Mentally it doesn't seem to affect them either, the hot brand is only deep enoough to scar not to damage deep tissue which is when you get regrowth of nerves, it is no more than the sharp pain you get from an oven burn that lasts for a few days. The actual skin contact is minimal if you look at any brand it is usually just made of thin lines joined together. I don't like hurting any horse deliberately but if it wasn't for the dishonest humans around we wouldn't need to do it at all.

cptrayes - remember that the brand itself was nowhere near that size when originally done, it grew with the horse
 
Just picking up on the Exmoor topic here - foals born in the wild are given dispensation from DEFRA re the time limit set to microchip for obvious reasons.

The brands on an Exmoor are the herd sign (ie Anchor), a diamond to state they were born out on the moors and a number.

Brand marks are essential on wild ponies when out and about checking them on the moors - from a brand you can instantly identify an animal. You can't go up to a wild pony and scan it for a microchip to identify it! I have very often been out on the moors on my mare looking for a certain pony to check it specifically if someone thinks its been hit by a car.

I'm not sure how relevant this reply is as the OP appears to be in favour of branding wild native ponies. However, I'm not sure if you are into farming and the daily grind of ear tagging agricultural animals? I cannot understand why DEFRA don't encourage branding in this country which would save the farmers and the animals (who rip their ears) an awful lot of time and pain! A lot of pigs are ear notched, the notch specific to the breed society and I am sure some Welsh ponies are? Yet it seems that ear notching for ponies has been banned but not for pigs? (someone will have to correct me on that)
 
I have everything I need right here at home to fake a brand. It would be a lot easier than faking the passport to go with it.
 
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Ravenwood said:
Just picking up on the Exmoor topic here - foals born in the wild are given dispensation from DEFRA re the time limit set to microchip for obvious reasons.

The brands on an Exmoor are the herd sign (ie Anchor), a diamond to state they were born out on the moors and a number.

Brand marks are essential on wild ponies when out and about checking them on the moors - from a brand you can instantly identify an animal. You can't go up to a wild pony and scan it for a microchip to identify it! I have very often been out on the moors on my mare looking for a certain pony to check it specifically if someone thinks its been hit by a car.

I'm not sure how relevant this reply is as the OP appears to be in favour of branding wild native ponies. However, I'm not sure if you are into farming and the daily grind of ear tagging agricultural animals? I cannot understand why DEFRA don't encourage branding in this country which would save the farmers and the animals (who rip their ears) an awful lot of time and pain! A lot of pigs are ear notched, the notch specific to the breed society and I am sure some Welsh ponies are? Yet it seems that ear notching for ponies has been banned but not for pigs? (someone will have to correct me on that)
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I have problem seeing any alternative to branding wild living horse herds in multiple ownership. The balance between the length of handling needed for hot versus cold marking makes the two difficult to choose between.

I absolutely agree with you on the ear tagging. I watch my friend double tag their sheep in case they tear one out and routinely see them missing both! Why on earth can't they tattoo the ear or do something else? Hot branding a lamb ear would probably be no worse than punching two tags into it and having them tear them out.

Ear notching horses is now illegal. Countryfile got in a lot of trouble for showing it a few weeks ago on telly!
 
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maggiesmum said:
Freezemarking is just as painful as hot branding - Now thats a ridiculous statement!!
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Freezebranding does not hurt - because the nerves are frozen - why do you put a packet of frozen peas on a burn or a bruise - to remove the pain, it numbs the nerves.

The only reason the TB foals are sedated is to hold them still long enough, it takes longer to freezebrand than hot brand and you don't want them wriggling
 
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