Sunday, June 6, 2010

Tags

I always get asked how I keep my cows straight and know which ones are mine. Although it is fairly easy for me to know all of our cows as we only have 50, when you get into larger herds of 200+ it gets to be difficult.

In our herd we have a simple tagging process.
This is one of my animals. You can tell by the SLY in the tag. All SLY animals were bred by me. The 12X means that she is #12 and was born in the year letter X. We use the letters of the alphabet to identify how old an animal is and when they were born. We do not use I, O, Q, and V. The Rev in the bottom left hand corner means that her sire is Revolution, and the 669 means that her mother is 669 also know as Ruffles.
This ones tag is slightly different. This heifer has a 2N at the top of her tag. That is because she is an embryo calf on a recipient mother. The 437 at the bottom right of her tag is the number of her recipient mother, and her sire is P.D. or Power Drive.

Having our tags like this helps when people come to look at cattle and during breeding season. It is really easy to know what pedigree animals are without having to think to much. As calves we also have a rough idea of when their birth date is depending on what number they are.

Once your get the process down, it does become a lot simpler.


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