Bought cows today

[bird dog]

Murray, I would bet you have a brand inspector at the sale barn. The TSCRA usually hires them. They don't interact with the public very often. They just look for brands, tags ear notches and other markings and then turn the info in to the association.

 

[Dave]

Murray, I would bet you have a brand inspector at the sale barn. The TSCRA usually hires them. They don't interact with the public very often. They just look for brands, tags ear notches and other markings and then turn the info in to the association.

Murray is in north Oklahoma. Why would a TSCRA inspector be there? I thought the TS in TSCRA stood for Texas State.

 

[bird dog]

Texas and Southwest Cattle Raisers Association.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Interesting.
I know the usda guy shows up at a bunch of em. Wonder if there's any connection.

 

[kenny thomas]

Interesting.
I know the usda guy shows up at a bunch of em. Wonder if there's any connection.

Here the State Department of Agriculture comes to every sale and installs EID tags. He also bleeds a % of the cows to check for a tick borne disease. We have no brands so no inspector.

 

[bird dog]

The TSCRA brand inspectors are there mostly to help with cattle theft problems. They are cattle folks that know what they are doing and observe cattle coming in. They write down any way to identify them they can. They are watching for cattle reported missing. They watch for stuff that just doesn't look right. A lot of the stolen cattle have no marks and can't be positively ID'ed but sometimes there are other ways to catch a thief. Most of the time they are pulling a stolen trailer. A load of cattle with a hole in their ear but no tags is suspicious.

Newbies coming to a sale barn for the first time are looked at closely if they have more than a couple cows or act like they don't know what they are doing. They work with the sale barn employees to look for things not right. A new seller in a hurry to get his check is always a tipoff.

The barns also have a USDA guy there but he does things with Mexican cattle and makes sure bulls going back to the farm are Trich tested. I don't think he does anything with brands.

 

[Dave]

In both Oregon and Washington the brand inspectors are state employees. They physically inspect every cow that comes to the sale. Then issue a state brand release which lists the buyer, new owner, and destination. That paper is proof of ownership good for 8 days. The only USDA employee I have ever seen at the sale is the man who does the market report at Toppenish. That is the one and only sale in the PNW that gets a USDA market report. Extremely rare to see a state employee other than the brand inspectors.

 

[farmerjan]

The metal tags you are referring to @MurraysMutts , are an ID tag... yes they were used for Bangs vacc... BUT... they were also put in the ears of any breeding age cattle that were going back to the farm... They are no longer valid... all cattle that are bangs vacc get the "button tags" now... but if they already have them it is allowed.. if they go back to the farm.... for ID purposes...
Any and ALL dairy animals... cows, calves, bulls, baby calves, HAVE to have the button ID tags now... And with the final implementation of the traceability act that was passed in .... maybe 2013?.... and put into effect in stages... ANY breeding age INTACT cattle, over 18 months of age... any/all dairy cattle of any sex... buffalo, any animals used for rodeo, and any show animals HAVE to have the traceability ID now...

You can go on the USDA gov't website and pull up traceability act.. and you can read the whole thing through... The third and final segment of the traceability act went into effect Nov 2nd or something like that... so maybe they allow the brands to be used in the western states, but I was thinking that they were going to require the buttons even if they are branded cattle...
Our local stockyard put in a huge fancy squeeze chute, crowd tub deal, so they could accommodate the requirements for the bred cow sales and such....
We just got 300 buttons, while they are free from the state... so I can put them in any holstein steers and such, that we sell.... because you know they are going to start charging to do it at the stockyards/sale barns... it is time and manpower to do that for any breeding age animal to be tagged if they are going to go back to the farm...

 

[Dave]

I see them using the round button tags on heifers that get Bangs vaccinated. I have also stood at the chute watching them preg check at the sale. They check the metal tag from Bangs vaccination. If they are missing the metal tag but have the tattoo in the right ear a new metal tag is applied. If they don't have proof of a Bangs vaccination they are marked as a non vac which means they aren't allowed to be shipped across the state line. No round tags applied to bred cows who are going back to the country. I watched them doing this just last Wednesday.
Only round tags applied to heifers being Bangs vaccinated. When you buy heifers that have not been vaccinated they will ask if you want/need them vaccinated. Going out of state they need it but if they stay in Oregon you can decile.

 

[Katpau]

Up until 2022, Bangs vaccinations were required in Oregon for all cows kept as breeding animals. They had to be applied before heifers reached a year old. Those vaccinations had to be administered by a veterinarian. Supposedly cows sold without the tags were NOT to be kept as breeding animals. I don't know how they would enforce it, but animals sold at a sale barn without the tags, were sold as cull cows. My old Vet was apparently not great at applying those tags. I have almost none of them still in the Cow's ears. That did not change when he switched to the electronic tags in 2020. I was looking at my 2022 cows the other day, and noticed only one still has her electronic tag. I sure hope these new expensive tags last longer than that. :(
Oregon had not had a case of brucellosis for something like 20 years, so the state finally quit requiring the Bangs vaccination. I am really glad for that, because all of our local large animal Vet Clinics were bought by a national corporation in the last two years. Now you would likely pay at least $300, just to have a vet out to do Bangs on a single heifer. In the past, my old vet would come out and do preg checks on the cows and bangs on all the heifers for less than $5 each.
I called the state just before the requirement was put in place to see if they had a any of those free electronic ear-tags in Oregon. I was told they only received a few and all had been distributed. I ordered them at our Coop and they cost $4.49 each, plus $32.99 for the tagger. I was not expecting them to be that expensive.

 

[Dave]

I bought a lot of non vaccinated bred cows at the sale before 2022. Being a non vaccinated cow prevented them from going out of state. Being right on the Idaho border that eliminated much of the competition to buy them. I always get them cheaper by a few bids. I did see them put in those round tags yesterday at the chute while preg checking. They even put them in big fat older open cows. You know that those cows are taking a one way trip this morning. Why put a E tag in them? I looked at my cows while feeding this week. Not a single E tag on any of them and many of them were bought in November.

 

[MurraysMutts]

Sure seems like a waste of money doesn't it @Dave

I think the goal is traceability. I guess once they are tagged, if they are ever re-sold, all they gotta do is scan the tag later.
I know some of the buyers around here buy for many different clients. So a slaughter buyer may not be necessarily taking them to the plant. At least not all of em anyway.

I've always been a bit resistant to change, especially when something has been working for so long. Why change it now.

Any good deals this week?

 

[Dave]

Sure seems like a waste of money doesn't it @Dave

I think the goal is traceability. I guess once they are tagged, if they are ever re-sold, all they gotta do is scan the tag later.
I know some of the buyers around here buy for many different clients. So a slaughter buyer may not be necessarily taking them to the plant. At least not all of em anyway.

I've always been a bit resistant to change, especially when something has been working for so long. Why change it now.

Any good deals this week?

Buyers here most certainly buy for many different people. But a broken mouth open fat cow is 99.99999% of the time going to kill. Heck most 1-3 month bred cows are headed to the plant.

Very few bred cows yesterday. Only 1 who would fit my program. They have a reader board which along with other things said how many are checked in, number sold, and how many are left. It got down to 100 left. Then it jumped up to over 300. I went out to see if the bred cows were moved up closer. Came back in and saw the number was over 400 feeders left to sell. It was foggy and freezing and would be getting dark in an hour. I said the heck with it. I am not sticking around a couple more hours to buy one cow. It was just getting dark when I got home.

 

[farmerjan]

@Dave , If you bought them before the final stage was implemented of the tracebility thing that went into effect Nov 5th then that is why none had tags... Now those tags do not signify vaccinations, just that they are breeding age ....over 18 months.... not sure how all the different stockyards will handle it, but supposedly they are supposed to be in the ears of ANYTHING that goes back to the farm that is an intact breeding animal.

 

[Dave]

It may have gone into effect Nov 5 but we are about a month behind. They were doing all the cows yesterday for the first time. Even the kill cows who will be hanging in the cooler in the next day or two. At this point it just looks like it is the cows going through the sale and it is a requirement for cows hauled across state lines. I wonder how much the sale barn is going to charge the consignors for doing this. I bet some of the big sales like Toppenish where they run 1,000+ kill cows a sale are really loving this.

 

[Travlr]

It may have gone into effect Nov 5 but we are about a month behind. They were doing all the cows yesterday for the first time. Even the kill cows who will be hanging in the cooler in the next day or two. At this point it just looks like it is the cows going through the sale and it is a requirement for cows hauled across state lines. I wonder how much the sale barn is going to charge the consignors for doing this. I bet some of the big sales like Toppenish where they run 1,000+ kill cows a sale are really loving this.

I'm gonna have to go down and visit my local barn to see if they are doing anything. They run 25/3500 animal through this time of year.

 

[Dave]

I'm gonna have to go down and visit my local barn to see if they are doing anything. They run 25/3500 animal through this time of year.

They had 3,000+ calves plus about 400 cows and bulls yesterday. I was out at the vet chute checking out bred cows. They were putting tags in the kill cows too. I watched a couple hundred calves sell. All the heifers had those tags in their ear when they came in the ring. They must have another chute out back where they tag the heifers. Tagging that many heifers in a timely manner and not getting the various owner's calves mixed up is going to be a night mare.

 

[chevytaHOE5674]

Why aren't producers tagging them before they ship?

Sale barn we ship to will tag them if needed but for what they charge per animal I can tag 7 or 8 at home.

 

[WAnabee]

Why aren't producers tagging them before they ship?

Sale barn we ship to will tag them if needed but for what they charge per animal I can tag 7 or 8 at home.

My guess would be maybe they will start when they start to see the charges show up? Its all new to me.

 

[kenny thomas]

Im going to have to look tomorrow but im pretty sure only the cows going back to the farm are tagged here. No calves of any size are tagged. And the tags are free and installed by a Virginia Department of Agricultural guy as they are preg checked and aged by our market guys.