Tag Making (featuring a cat photobomb...)

 If you've been around the site for a while, you've seen me post quite a few things mentioning ear tags and records at the farm.  When the baby calves are born, they are given a small, hand written tag with the same number as their mama.  But if they grow up and are chosen to stay in the herd and become mamas themselves, they need a new form of identification.

This is the point when we assign new numbers to the new replacement females.  Every ranch has their own unique identification system that works for them.  One common method is to start the number with the year the heifer calf was born.  In the video below, the females I'm making tags for were born in 2015 so they start with a "5".  We like to add an abbreviation for the ranch name if they are purchased from outside our herd or the dam's number if we raised the female ourselves.  We also add the sire of the animal.  This makes all the info really handy when you are working the cattle or checking them on grass.  

There are lots of brands of tags to choose from but I like these engraveable tags.  Watch this short video to see how I make a tag for a new cow in the herd.  And stay til the end to see the cat photobomb my tutorial!!  You just never know who might show up around here!!

It's actually a long, slow process but I shortened this up to give you a quicker version!  It would be faster to use a special tag marker but these are more permanent and there is no fading over time so it's worth a little extra effort up front!

Here is Gail giving the cow her new tag