What's in a name? (or number??)

Tags made for all calves born today!!

Ever wonder why cows have ear tags or what all those numbers mean on the tags?  Again, every operation has a different system but here's a quick overview of ours...

We tag every calf within 24-48 hours of birth.  The calf gets a matching number to their mama so it's easy to know who they belong to and to get them paired up quickly if necessary.  We also like to include the date of birth on the tag as a reference, and the middle set of numbers represents the sire or "dad" of the calf. 

Getting a weight on this new baby calf

In our case, we use artificial insemination to breed the bulk of our cows to elite genetics.  This means you can purchase a few units of a particular bull without buying the actual bull that can cost upwards of $50,000 to as much as $200,000.  It's a great way to improve our genetics in a cost effective manner!  Tracking these sire groups is very important from a data collection standpoint so having it on the tag is a great reference.

All of the information is also hand recorded on spreadsheets as each calf is born and later entered in the computer.  We collect individual weights on each calf to also help track performance of the cow, sire, and individual calf.  We use different colors of tags to tell the difference between the different breed groups we have but it can also be used for sire groups, cow groups, ownership groups, pasture groups, or lots of other different options.  There are as many tagging systems as there are producers so the trick is finding one that works for your operation!!

At a glance I know this little dude belongs to cow #3009, he's out of Western Cut (WC) and he was born 2/17