Herd Information

[Rosielou]

Wasn't sure where to put this, but oh well. I'm re organizing our herd information and I was curious as to how everyone else here does it. What do you guys put on your individual cow information? I would like to put, age, color, calving date, etc(Sort of like a profile?) but I would have to replace them or fix them each year to update them. So what do you guys do?

 

[cow pollinater]

I do most of it by eartag so that I don't have to rely on notes as much. The last digit in my eartag number is the last digit of the year she was born. The first three digits are her individual number and I start at 001 and we brand in small sets as the calves are of branding age so when I see a calves tagged 1013 and 0013 and they are the same size, I know that the first is the better calf without looking at records as by eartag age it's younger but the same size... I also can watch cows differently based on that number as I don't have to have paperwork in hand to tell me who my older cows are. Cows that come in from the sale(which is a large portion of the herd right now) get an X as the last number and if they fail they go back to the sale.
On paper, I use a spreadsheet for every property with a list of who is supposed to be where. I keep it simple and have columns for calving date, breeding dates(if I can catch them) and remarks. If she is an X cow then I will put my best guess for her age in the remarks column. I have a column for matching mother and calf but I don't use it unless I'm positive and I don't babysit them so I'm hesitant to use that column quite often unless I see something exciting.

That being said, my notes can usually go unwritten for quite a while. Don't ask me to remember my own birthday but I can remember 0111 calving like it was yesterday and I can tell you most of her pedigree and the calf's as well even though neither of them are all that special... I guess it's just a matter of what people devote their brains to.

 

[M5farm]

I have a picture of each cow and I take a pic of the calf when it's born it has a date stamp on it. A few times a year I edit my excel spread sheet. It has cow number brief description date born or bought amount paid or sold for. It is in workbook form so I start a new page each year. It is stored on my phone, home computer, work computer and the cloud. I also print a copy to keep in my notebook where I make notes on everything else seeing a cow bulling, special shots, condition etc

 

[Putangitangi]

I have a number of documents and spreadsheets which hold different information about them and when I list them all, it looks like a lot of mucking around; but I use them all differently and they suit how my mind works.

There's a primary "cattle numbers" document which holds all the records of the whole herd forever and their birth date, dam, sire, gestation period (used to put that in there, but it's duplicated elsewhere). I use this most regularly when thinking about cow families and who's who. I pull birth dates and tag numbers directly from here to upload as data files to the national Animal Identification scheme each year.

I have an annual calving date spreadsheet which I bring up more regularly as we approach spring and then update as they're born.

There's a gestation calculator (which I really ought to combine with the above, but just keep doing what I did before) and that runs for years, so I can easily search by dam, days etc. historically.

I also have a huge gestation data spreadsheet which gives me average gestation for the cows and the bulls I've used, along with herd averages for heifers, bulls, ai or natural, etc., that covers the 18 years or so of my herd's existence. That's a really interesting one to mess around in.

I also (of course) have a treatments spreadsheet with all the cattle listed so I can record when they receive routine treatments.

What I'd really like is a super-duper management program which ties all these things together without my having do to endless data-entry to set it up and which doesn't cost me a bomb.

 

[dun]

I cheat and just use CattleMax. Been using it for almost 15 years and I like it.

 

[bigbull338]

if i want to know a cows age i look at her reg papers.and i remember her calving date.if i want to know who the sire is i look at my reg papers.

 

[buzzy]

ours all get a 4 digit number on their eartag the first 2 is the year born 3rd is for spring or fall 4th is their number we use 01-49 for spring and 50-99 for fall ex. 9923 is a 99 model born in the spring and 0862 is an 08 model born in the fall

 

[Rosielou]

Thank you guys for the replies! We don't use eartags because we can tell our cows apart by color, and we nickname some :roll: - but I think next calving season I'm going to put them in the tags of my black calves. I use my phone and computer for alot of it, but I decided it would help my grandfather more if I put it on paper re-organized for him. I think I will write up some documents in word and put them into a binder for him. Thank you all again