Ear Tagging for Good Records

[A-RRanch]

Ok guys I am going to ear tag all my cows as I am getting the few pairs we have organized and buying more to sort of re-build a small operation here. My question is what method do you guys use when ear tagging for easy identification and keeping good records? I thought of using the last two digits of the year the cow was born as the first two digits on the tag for instance I have a 2003 cow here she would be tagged 0301 does that seem smart or no?

 

[hillsdown]

How I do it each calf has the sire and dams ID on their tag as well as their own ID which is the same as their tattoo . Eg if it is the first calf born in 2013 it would be HDG 1A with the sires number at the top of the tag and dams underneath .

In the near future we will be freeze branding their ID number on them , jic a tag is lost it will be easier to ID them than running them through the chute to look at their tattoo.

 

[wbvs58]

In Australia most registered cattle are identified with a letter for the year then their number eg last year was H so a calf would have H22 on its tag and the registered ID would be the herd prefix followed by the individual ID eg ABC H 22. I think the letter and numeral on the tag works well, is easy to read. This year is J as I is one of the few letters not used, I guess because of the similarity to the numeral 1.
Ken

 

[dun]

In Australia most registered cattle are identified with a letter for the year then their number eg last year was H so a calf would have H22 on its tag and the registered ID would be the herd prefix followed by the individual ID eg ABC H 22. I think the letter and numeral on the tag works well, is easy to read. This year is J as I is one of the few letters not used, I guess because of the similarity to the numeral 1.
Ken

The letter for the year is the "International Year Code" 2013 is A, 2012 was Z, the code table is pretty easy to find on the internet.
Fist calf this year was A1, second A2, etc. That's all the information we put on the ear tag, more and it starts getting too busy for my taste. For commercial cows we base the year of birth off of their bangs tag, if no tag we just use a SWAG based on mouthing them.
We keep all of the data for each animal in CattleMax, i.e. DOB, Breeding data sire and dam, medical treatments/vacconations, etc., before we had that we just used an Excel spreadsheet and a standard paper form with the same informaiton.

 

[wbvs58]

In Australia most registered cattle are identified with a letter for the year then their number eg last year was H so a calf would have H22 on its tag and the registered ID would be the herd prefix followed by the individual ID eg ABC H 22. I think the letter and numeral on the tag works well, is easy to read. This year is J as I is one of the few letters not used, I guess because of the similarity to the numeral 1.
Ken

The letter for the year is the "International Year Code" 2013 is A, 2012 was Z, the code table is pretty easy to find on the internet.
Fist calf this year was A1, second A2, etc. That's all the information we put on the ear tag, more and it starts getting too busy for my taste. For commercial cows we base the year of birth off of their bangs tag, if no tag we just use a SWAG based on mouthing them.
We keep all of the data for each animal in CattleMax, i.e. DOB, Breeding data sire and dam, medical treatments/vacconations, etc., before we had that we just used an Excel spreadsheet and a standard paper form with the same informaiton.

I guess we must have our own year code in Australia just to be a bit different.
Ken

 

[dun]

In Australia most registered cattle are identified with a letter for the year then their number eg last year was H so a calf would have H22 on its tag and the registered ID would be the herd prefix followed by the individual ID eg ABC H 22. I think the letter and numeral on the tag works well, is easy to read. This year is J as I is one of the few letters not used, I guess because of the similarity to the numeral 1.
Ken

The letter for the year is the "International Year Code" 2013 is A, 2012 was Z, the code table is pretty easy to find on the internet.
Fist calf this year was A1, second A2, etc. That's all the information we put on the ear tag, more and it starts getting too busy for my taste. For commercial cows we base the year of birth off of their bangs tag, if no tag we just use a SWAG based on mouthing them.
We keep all of the data for each animal in CattleMax, i.e. DOB, Breeding data sire and dam, medical treatments/vacconations, etc., before we had that we just used an Excel spreadsheet and a standard paper form with the same informaiton.

I guess we must have our own year code in Australia just to be a bit different.
Ken

Haven;t figured out why but some breed associations use their own letter for the year

 

[dun]

http://blog.valleyvet.com/blog/2012/08/ ... oo-id.html

 

[cow pollinater]

Ok guys I am going to ear tag all my cows as I am getting the few pairs we have organized and buying more to sort of re-build a small operation here. My question is what method do you guys use when ear tagging for easy identification and keeping good records? I thought of using the last two digits of the year the cow was born as the first two digits on the tag for instance I have a 2003 cow here she would be tagged 0301 does that seem smart or no?

I do it similar to what you're describing. All of my replacement heifers born in 2012 will have a number that ends in 2. I used to try to match the first two digits to the cows id, for example cow 128 would be born in 2008 and her heifer calf from 2012 would be 122, but it gets to confusing when I brand as I do it in big groups so I try to match cows and calves after branding and then make any connection between the two on paper.
When I buy cows I guess on the older side when I assign a number so that when I forget who they are I'll already have them in mind for watching before problems come up.
What registered or purebred cows I have left I just put a P or R in front of their number on the tag and then keep their information on paper. I run them like commercial cows unless I see something special so it's pretty rare for the P or R to mean much.
I very much like the idea of having a numerical date number on the tag. That way age starts automatically factoring into your decision making.

 

[sim.-ang.king]

Remember KISS,
Keep
It
Simple
Stupid
I just put the letter year, calf number, and I put 1 mark on the button for my Sim bull, 2 marks for my sim cross bull, 3 marks for AI. Then I go to Cattlemax add a calf to the cow, click which bull, and have his'/her's records just a click away.

 

[herefordlover]

I do the year with numbers as u were saying works good for me as it takes me a bit to think about letters to years. But i would say what ever works for you is what i would use

 

[cow pollinater]

I have also seen a few herds where one ear got the cows birth year and the other ear got the individual cow number. I liked that system as long as she kept both tags but I like two tags with the same number in either ear better.

 

[dun]

I do the year with numbers as u were saying works good for me as it takes me a bit to think about letters to years. But i would say what ever works for you is what i would use

All you have to figure it out is the first calf of the year, it isn;t going to change again for year.
We also tag heifers in the left ear and bulls/steers in the right. Just makes it handy when they're not too close by and you want to know which gender calf is which. Forthe heifers and those that will remain bulls we tattoo their ID in the ear as if they were registered. Just don;t bother putting the herd prefix in the other ear.

 

[Dega Moo]

We've recently changed our protocol. Left ear is tagged with a pre-printed sequential number, momma's number hand written on the back of that tag (to the cowboy who tags the calves) and we put EID tag and button in right ear of all breeding stock. We look up birth dates (and any other information) quickly enough on smart phones using any of those identifications. Ranch use to use letters for the year and different colored tags for the month and every number was hand written. I've seen 5 minutes spent in the chute trying to clean the tag and read it correctly. That's 5 minutes for each person working the herd at that time. The heck with that silliness - I want laser etched big block numbers on a yellow background. Easy to see in the pasture and the chute. EID reader makes it even simpler. On another note, I see little use in coding birth year on a tag. At the extreme, the difference between a calf born 12/31 of a given year and 1/1 of the next isn't a year but a day. Using a year encoding tends to over simplify the information. Besides, we'll know a lot about the birth order simply by looking at the number ranges.

 

[highgrit]

We do the last digit of the year as the first number. And the next number is the order they we born. On the back of the tag is the dams number. My wife keeps a ledger on every animal we have. Sure is nice to have a woman with a photographic memory. She can tell you who's who and who belongs to who, and which bull sired them.

 

[dun]

On another note, I see little use in coding birth year on a tag. At the extreme, the difference between a calf born 12/31 of a given year and 1/1 of the next isn't a year but a day. Using a year encoding tends to over simplify the information. Besides, we'll know a lot about the birth order simply by looking at the number ranges.

We calve only in the spring so the year is important 5 years down the road so we know how old (yearwise) a given cow is.
We sold some registered cows yesterday and one of them had lost her tag. The folks that bought them tagged her in both ears plus flytags in each ear. The Id tag, had her ID number (based on her refistration ID, sire name, dam name and DOB. To crows it all on the information was written so small that you almost had to have her head in your lap to read it.

 

[Black and Good]

All females have tags orange in left ear. All males have yellow in right ear. Front of tag has mom # then a letter for calf #. For example first calf heifer #25 has bull yellow tag right ear #25-A, has heifer calf orange tag left ear #25-A. Next year same thing #25-B and so on. Then When I decide to keep a Heifer she gets a orange "Richtie" tag with same info. Same goes for bulls.
Then on back D.O.B. and Sire. :banana: B&G

 

[randiliana]

I just start at #1 and go up from there. I reuse tags when a cow is culled out and the calf gets the same tag # as the cow has.

 

[Terrell]

Tagging systems that work fine on paper records can sometimes create a few surprises when moving to computer records such as software or spreadsheets.

As far as numbering systems go, the best advice I can give would be to avoid duplicating tag numbers. The Beef Improvement Federation has a list of year letter designations from 1969 to 2019. Using this system, I can look at cow 100M and know she is a 2002 model, look at calf 100U in her production history and know it is a 2008 model out of the 100 cow. Any heifer calves kept as replacements are issued a new tag number to avoid having both 100M and 100U having a Calf 100A.

As far as tagging systems go, we find that many of the cow-calf producers buy pre-printed tags for their breeding herd (cows, bulls, replacement heifers) so that the tags are laser engraved and inked for long-term readability. Those that do know their calf numbers in advance will have pre-printed tags for their calves but many will also just buy blank tags and use a marking pen since long-term readability isn't as important for calves that are kept around for less than a year.

 

[randiliana]

We have used the preprinted tags in the past, and have gone to making our own tags using the liquid tag ink. Maybe they have improved a lot, but it used to take about 1-2 years for those tags to fade to the point you couldn't read them.

The computer program I am using, allows me to re-use tag #'s so long as the animals are born in different years.

 

[dun]

A couple of years ago we started using the ink from Festron Fearing. Etches it's way into the plastic and they'vestayed black for 4-5 years which is a lot longe then the Y-Tex ink lasted