Tagging Cattle

How does your ID system work on your farm? How do you tag your calves number wise same as cow? Number as they"re born?

Thanks for any suggestions

my kids are initials and in order they came..

example 1st calf would be  cm001, number 16 would be cm016- these are for the commercial cattle.
registered cattle have their own numbers and letters- the letters ( I recently found out) represent the yr of birth

we go in the order the calf is born, and then the year code.

so number one would be 01X, and then you go from there. We don't even tag so much anymore because they're shorthorns and we can tell them apart mostly. But we do sometimes tag the ones we get in for sale and we'll even put their name on it if a kid wants a steer with his name on his tag.

Well I dont like the giving calves the cows number but with a different letter. If the cow has many heifers that you keep it may get confusing. Also to tag them at birth with the matching cow number and then when replaced at weaning or when ever you decide to keep her a a replacment just seems like the cost of a nother tag could add up. What I do it use the year as the first digit then go from 1 on.EXample the first calf here this year will be 001 then 002 etc. Then I put the sire code on top of that usually one to three letters. Then I put the cows ID under the calfs number. That way it is east to pair them up when sorting. I also use colour coded for the breed of cows.

I use a 4 digit numbering system and calves are tagged in numerical order. I don't use the letter system because it takes too much thought to remember what year P or Q or L was. The first calf born this year will be 1001, last 2 digits of the year first and then the calfs number in order of birth. This system works pretty good if you have less than 100 cows, you always know what year they were born in and you always know that 1001 is older than 1039 for example. RW

Thanks for the replies. Hopefully i'll figure out what i'm gonna do here soon

we put the cows freeze brand in big numbers on the front side then the sire initials on top, then on the back side we put the date they were born.

Cows simply have a #, nothing special about it, and we reuse both tags and #'s. Any replacement heifers just get the next unused #. When we cull a cow, or lose one the # is then open for another animal. For individual ID all our cows either have a tattoo or a RFID tag, which I really don't use unless a tag is lost and I'm not sure who the cow is.

The calves are tagged with the same # as the cow. Bull/steer calves get an orange tag and heifers get a white one. Steers usually get sold with their tag, but any heifers that get a herd # we save their eartags and use them again. Only other thing that goes on the tag is our brand, at the top. Just makes for easier ID if a cow or calf decides to go visiting.

kind of similar to forstback, at calving, I tag the calf the same as the cow.  At weaning, I retag them with their sequentially originated number.  For example if I kept replacement heifer 911W, her tag would be a 911 with a W up top.  She may have been out of cow 606S, the sixth heifer from 2006 who was out of 424P and so on.  Who they were out of doesn't really matter, I know all my cows.  They just get the tags for the year.

Now that it is 2010, I will start the calves next fall with 011X, 012X, etc.(if I keep those calves), just because I think '00'
numbers don't fit my style.

And, when I have more than 100 calves out of my nucleus herd, I place a 0 in there e.g. 8011 was the 111th calf of 2008.  And that year, I had claves out of 3 herds, so I used 8xxU, 81xxU, 82xxU and 83xxU, where the 1, 2 and 3 herds are co-op cattle that have the same numbers every year, hence 9105 was the fifth calf from the herd associated with 1.  They are all tagged with one color, green in the right ear.  Some of that will be changing as I am taking on some lease cows...those, the steers are tagged in the right ear, heifers in the left...they all have yellow tags, but when I retag any of them in the fall that I want to keep as my own heifers, they will get green.

for heifer calves, I use white tags and tag in the order of birth, 001, 002,003... the hundreds place helps mark the year, last year it was 901,902...

for bull calves, I use blue tags and just start at 1,2,3...

Is there any talk of using RFID tags down there in the US for electronic tracking?

9KF01

9- year born=2009
KF=KF-Acres
01= numerical sentence of calves born- starting with 1, and going up... 

we have shorthorns, and commercials... so the letter year code hasn't been a problem, yet, for us.  If we expand to other breeds--, we might have to work something else out though...  Don't plan on it- just yet

when a two yearold calves she is given a new number such as 808  818  828    I do not generally keep more than ten heifers per year so this gives me a way to keep track of the birth year of the heifer .     
  using the year number twice gives me a chance to see it even when her hair grows long.  Someone mentioned the price of a tag,  years ago I bought tags at an auction for pennies on the dollar.  Now I just have to buy buttons, still a cost but not as much. The calves are numbered consecutively from the beginning of the calving season.

All of our cows have 3 digit numbers that represent their unique 2digits number and the year they were born in front of it.  817 was born in 2008. Then when 817 calves in 2010, her calf would have a 4 digit number in 2 rows on the tag. On the top, it would 8, saying her mother was 817. The bottom number would be 017, so the tag would look like this:
8
017
We don't number in the order they are born for the simple reason that without checking my calving book, I don't know which cow #51 would belong to but the way we have ours I can easily find a cow's calf or look for a calf's mother by using the tag. For those calves that we keep as replacement heifers, we would give them a new unique 3 digit number. We still keep track of who their sire and dam are in our database but this prevents getting 6 animals with the same number. We have over 100 cows so we still have some duplicate numbers but not duplicate number and year combo. I have an 115 and a 915 and a 415 but not 2 of the 415 cows.
I hope that was clear as pea soup!

We just started with 1 with the 1st one born and continue to go up sequentially with each new year picking up where the previous left off.  We put a sire and dam on the tag as well as a year number (100-9 means calf 100 was born in 2009) .

The date the calf was born on top of the tag, then the numer of the cow plus a 1 or 0 in front of that then sires name on bottom then on the back i put An H or an S or a B for gender.

Its amazing all of the different combinations people come up with. All of them seem like they would work well. What has worked best for us, is tagging calves the same as the cow, we find it easier to get a pair in if someone is lagging behind. Heifers get tagged in the left ear, bulls in the right. Each herd bull has is own color of tag to make sire id easier, AI calves all get the same color with a letter code.
Replacement heifers always start with the last number of the year they were born, plus a combination of their mother's number. 818, 899, 811, etc for 2008 models. We started double tagging replacement heifers just in case they lose a tag and it makes it easier to see numbers.

It never ceases to amaze me how a cow can manage to loose two tags within a year, and some have been in for years! Also, the biggest thing I find about tags, the bigger the writing and better penmanship make it much easier to read! We use to try and put a lot of information on the tags, but it got too hard to read from a distance.
The thing I like about our system is choosing the ear based on sex, and the color codes for bulls; but most of all, just the consistency we have been using so we are more knowledgeable about calves out at pasture.

We tag them with their own unique sequential number (first calf is 01X),  cow number, birthdate, and bull ID.  From the top - birthdate - small numbers, then calf # and then cow # on the bottom.  Bull ID goes on the back.    We tag heifers in the left ear, bulls in the right.    Commercials are tagged with white tags, registered calves a different color, and ET calves yet another color.    The cow ID on the ET calf's tag is the recip's number..  flush info goes on the back of the tag. 

Having the cow number on the tag really helps from a management standpoint.  We have no trouble pairing them up.    If we have a set of twins or foster a calf off - the calf gets a different color tag in the other ear to quickly reference it to the new cow or that it is a twin.. 

Replacement heifers will get a 2nd tag in the other ear when we start the synch/AI program.  That tag will just have the sequential number from the other tag..    The idea is that she'll go into the herd with 2 tags.    We also brand them with the ID number at the same time.

frostback said:

I think it is a waste to re tag them, I have a hard time remembering numbers and I dont want to have to re remember a number if they stay. If that works for you great, not putting your system down, do what ever works for you.

Click to expand...

I think each program has it's own benefits...that's why I said 'kinda' similar.  not everyone has the benefit of grass right out their front door.  Sometimes our cattle are 50 or 60 miles from home and people that don't know our cattle are taking care of them...if they are not paired up, the people taking care of them think it's a waste of time to have a little piece of paper in their pocket saying this cow matches this calf for 120 pair.