Ear piercing time.

We moved the three cows and four calves back to the yards. This left the two mothers to be in the calving paddock. As we're going to organise marking, and we need to keep these cows and calves separate, we decided to mark them now.
For the three girls it means a numbered tag in the left ear and an electronic tag in the right ear. We use different coloured tags each year for five years and then start the colours again. This makes finding an animal in the paddock a little easier. The boys always get a blue tag as they all get sold whereas we keep four or five heifers each year as replacements for culled cows.
The electronic tag contains our property details. It means that, as the breeder, the animal/meat can always be traced back through the food chain to us.
As Nemo is a little bull calf, it also means putting him 'out of action'. He will then be referred to as a steer. The girls are heifers - once they've had a calf, they are then cows. Darren and Lonnie came down to lend a hand to push them down the race and get them in the head bale.
Hayden, our stock agent, wants to help with marking the rest of the calves so we'll call him next week and organise a day.
Went to the Tavern. It's very strange to be in there with only three tables occupied. Still, a nice meal and nice company.Lue lisää