Ear Tag Info

[Lazyacre]

I was wondering what information some of you put on the ear tags. I know this is personal preference as for as much or as little as you can. I am trying to decide what info to put on the calf tags as they are born.
Thanks for any information

 

[Running Arrow Bill]

I was wondering what information some of you put on the ear tags. I know this is personal preference as for as much or as little as you can. I am trying to decide what info to put on the calf tags as they are born.
Thanks for any information

Some producers write the name of the animal in small words. Others put their sequential I.D. # on the tag. This is especially important if you are raising "cookie cutter" cattle (all the same color and breed).

With our Longhorns, no two are the exact same color...no problem knowing who is who. The only ear tags we use are the ones the Vet puts on for their Brucellosis vaccination.

 

[MikeC]

I put the sequential number of the animal (which includes birth year code - "R" for 2005) dam number and sire number.

 

[certherfbeef]

When my calves hit the ground they get a calf sized tag with only mamma's number on it. At weaning time, the little tag is cut out (saved for next year cause I'm cheap) and replaced with a big one. The big one has their number, this is 2005 so the numbers start with 5, It also has the sire's name on the bottom in little letters and the dam's number on the top in little letters and the calf's DOB on the back at the bottom.
A picture of them with their nimbers goes into a folder, cause my hubby is an idiot.

 

[msscamp]

Our calves get calf sized tags with their mother's numbers as they hit the ground. As yearlings, the calf tags are removed and replaced with their 'adult' numbers. Date of birth is recorded, calf number is recorded, replacement adult number is recorded and everything is cross-referenced.

 

[MikeC]

A picture of them with their nimbers goes into a folder, cause my hubby is an idiot.



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[dun]

Bulls get a medium sized blue tag in the right ear with a sequencial number, or as close to sequential as possible. Heifers get a yellow medium sized tag in the left ear with a sequentila number. We reuse the tags each year. We don;t worry much about taggin them when they're born, we tag at spring workup in most cases. We then have a cross list that equates each calf to a cow. We don;t worry about getting the tags right at first tagging we just kept track of who nurses who. In the fall the heifers that are retained get a regular sized tag with their permanent number based on sequentila number for that year and the letter code, i.e. this year it was R1, R2, R3, etc. The steers and the heifers that are going to market are tagged with a number that is provided by the marketing program.

dun

 

[Jeanne - Simme Valley]

Use full size (Ex-Large) eartags at birth. Red for heifers & yellow for males. Put birth date (2-15) on top (actually at the base of the "neck" of the tag), Put sire's name under that at top of the main part of the tag. Than put calf's permanent tattoo ID - Cow # + year letter.
As your herd grows with cow families, this system gets complicated. Cow family 29 can have 29E, 29G, 29M etc. When they calve, cow 29E's calf is E29R, cow 29G is G29R. You have to get creative with this system as years progress, but being able to look at an animal and ID the cow family is very important to us. We actually have a 29 cow family and it is soooo large now, I have had to drop the 2 and make some of the offspring a 9 number because I limit it to 4 digits (for a tattoo), so if I have E29M and G29M, I made their calves EM9R and GM9R. (actually if one of the calves was a heifer, I would have made it M29R since she might be staying in the herd.) Confused??? you should see my husband :shock:
But back to your original question, I put birthdate, sire & ID on color coded tags.

 

[Dusty Britches]

When my calves hit the ground they get a calf sized tag with only mamma's number on it. At weaning time, the little tag is cut out (saved for next year cause I'm cheap) and replaced with a big one. The big one has their number, this is 2005 so the numbers start with 5, It also has the sire's name on the bottom in little letters and the dam's number on the top in little letters and the calf's DOB on the back at the bottom.
A picture of them with their nimbers goes into a folder, cause my hubby is an idiot.

I used to use the same numbering system, but quit because my husband couldn't understand or comprehend the code. The first digit was the year, the second 2 digits was the month, and the last digits was the calf number.

I still take pictures and record the pre-numbered tag number. It is handy when I take them to the sale b/c the sale barn records the ear tag number with the sale number.

 

[bwranch]

Mama's # + "A" with sire name on top in smaller letters.
example:
LDN
413A

Dam = 413, sire=Lead On.

 

[certherfbeef]

A picture of them with their nimbers goes into a folder, cause my hubby is an idiot.



:?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?: :?:

He can't remember who is who out of who and when they were born and bred to who. So the picture and their info goes into the folder so he can keep them straight.
Makes him feel like he has some say in what goes on around here when he can look up "6316" in his little folder from the recliner.;-)

 

[Dana Kopp]

Our heifers all get a cow size white tag. On the top of the front of the tag I write the dam's number (small) and beneath it I write the calf's individual number. The calf number is it's number born & the last digit of the year i.e. the fourth calf born was 45, thirty-fifth was 355. On the back of the tag I put my "code" for the sire - usually the first letter of his name or tag # and then below that on the left corner the date the calf was born. We always tag in the left ear so that date can be seen. In this way any of our heifers are ready to be "keepers" without having to re-tag and all pertinent info is right there.

Our steers get a calf size red tag. The only difference in tagging is that I swap the placement of the cow# and Calf# on the front of the tag. Since we pretty much sell all the steer calves their individual number doesn't really come into play too much so after experimenting with which info we use more we decided to make the cow's number larger basically for sorting purposes.
When we first started out with our herd we had a slightly different system, I incorporated the cow's number directly intot the calf number but as we started to grow and keep heifers that got too cumbersome. I sat down and penciled out how different systems would work including keeping heifers and their future calves. :cboy:

 

[Frankie]

I was wondering what information some of you put on the ear tags. I know this is personal preference as for as much or as little as you can. I am trying to decide what info to put on the calf tags as they are born.
Thanks for any information

We use the regular size ear tags. They grow into them pretty quick. Cow #73 had a 5175 heifer this morning. Her ear tag has 10-18 (date of birth) at the top, (5175) sire ID in the middle, and 573 (her tattoo#) at the bottom. If we keep her as a replacement, we'll use tag #53 (5 for the year she was born, 3 for the last digit of her dam's #), for her permanent herd #.