Tagging calves

Ahh, tagging calves. It can be so tricky. It can also be rather easy. If the calf is immobilized on a calf-table or in a squeeze chute, it's simple as pie. If the calf is older than a day or two old and is running free, it gets a lot harder to do on foot. Now if you have a good horse and a talent for roping, then that's a different story. Unfortunately, we are usually on foot when we are trying to tag, so we don't get the luxury of a roping horse to assist us.

An eartag is a way of identifying the calf and marking them as belonging to your ranch. You can get pre-printed tags with numbers on them like this:

You can even get all fancy and special order tags pre-printed with your ranch name and brand on the tag. Or you can buy blank tags and get special markers to write your own number and brand on them yourself. We usually go with this route, because it's cheaper and we can individualize them exactly how we want them. The number that you assign to each calf, well, I think every ranch has their own system of identification. Some assign the calf a number that correlates back to it's mother cow, while some assign just consecutive numbers. But what WE do for our numbering system looks like this: 1201--"12" being the year the calves were born, and "01" being the consecutive order that the calves were born. So this year, all of our calves will be tagged with first a "12" and then whatever number of calf they are in the order that they are born--from "01" to "26". Does that make sense?

The reason we tag the calves as soon as they are born is to mark them as belonging to us, in case any cattle rustlers come along and try to steal them. Also, it's helpful to us to tag the calves so that each day, as we are out feeding the cattle, we can see an unmarked baby and know that it is a new calf. Unfortunately, we don't have the manpower to tag each calf immediately after it's born, so while we try to tag as many of them as we can, there's a handful that get away and have to wait.

The eartag gun looks like this:

It's fairly similar to a human getting their ear pierced. You load the tag onto the gun, load the "earring back" onto the sharp point, place the gun onto the earlobe of the calf, and squeeze. Voila, you have a beautifully tagged calf.

As you can see, this calf was born in 2011 and was the 7th calf born that year.

Stay tuned for several adrenaline-pumping tagging stories!