Ah, the life of a ranch hand's intern. You've just spent an entire afternoon corralling cattle. Now comes the fun part: sorting the steers.

The good news is the cattle owners have identified their property by branding their livestock. The bad news? These brands aren't always easy to decipher

Enter the corral and compare irons to brands. Match enough of the shapes correctly and earn a promotion. Mismatch brands and you'll do more than irritate the cattle. You'll be sorting steers until the cows come home.

Click Bessie to Begin

Lost and Found: A Brief History of Branding If you think getting a tattoo is something cool and new you're only about 5,000 years behind the times. Body art dates back to 3,000 B.C. Heck, even cattle were getting tattoos over a thousand years ago. For them, however, the art had a very different meaning. Ranchers used a form of tattooing -- called branding -- to identify their livestock. Unlike tattooing, branding doesn't involve ink. Instead it is the burning of a symbol or other identifying mark right into an animal's hide. In the old west ranchers would let their cattle roam freely across the countryside. When the time came to identify whose livestock belonged to whom, branded cattle were easy to identify. Though branding is common even today, not every animal feels the heat. There are many alternatives to red-hot irons. Freeze-branding uses dry ice or liquid nitrogen to leave a mark, and doesn't damage the animal hide. Ear tags and lip tattoos do even less damage and are considered even more humane. You read that correctly -- thousands of steer are also into body piercing. Who knew livestock was so hip?