Ear tagging calves

[SRBeef]

I am not always around when calves are born in the spring. I used to try to tag them as soon as I found them and discovered that can be very dangerous with a protective cow and herd that comes running.

After all calves are born and a few weeks old, I get them all in the corral (calves follow mom) for a grain treat. Vet and I run them all thru to weigh, pour, cut and shots. They get ear tags then.

Calves get random white eartag numbers since I have had poor luck trying to identify them for sure as they come thru the chute.

Within the next few days after workup I can see which calves are sucking on which cows and line up eartags in my Cattlemax program. Retained heifers get permanent yellow eartags and rfid sets in the fall workup.

Jim

 

[dun]

I am not always around when calves are born in the spring. I used to try to tag them as soon as I found them and discovered that can be very dangerous with a protective cow and herd that comes running.

After all calves are born and a few weeks old, I get them all in the corral (calves follow mom) for a grain treat. Vet and I run them all thru to weigh, pour, cut and shots. They get ear tags then.

Calves get random white eartag numbers since I have had poor luck trying to identify them for sure as they come thru the chute.

Within the next few days after workup I can see which calves are sucking on which cows and line up eartags in my Cattlemax program. Retained heifers get permanent yellow eartags and rfid sets in the fall workup.

Jim

For the calves we don;t tagged and weighed at birth we do exactly the same thing at spring workup. In Cattlemax I put down their id tag that isn;t their actual Registration tag as the "Other ID". Those tags can be about any color, so I put them down as O-12 (orange Tag number 12) B-5 (blue tag number 5) etc. Left ear for girls and right ear for boys In the fall we put in the permanent tag. I also have an Excel spreadsheet with each calfs real number, they other id number, BD, dam and sire. Makes it easier to cross calves and cows back and forth

 

[sim.-ang.king]

Usually try to tag at birth when i give them a shot of calf guard. Use a letter for year (Z=2012 by ASA lettering) and then a number for that calf, and goes in the right ear because we tattoo in the left ear for reg. calves.