If you’re a cattle farmer, you know that ear tagging is one of the essential cattle management practices.
The primary purpose of ear tagging is animal identification, which is key to a successful cattle business operation. In this blog post, we will provide some information about ear tags, the benefits of ear tags, and how you go about choosing the right cattle ear tags.
What Are Cattle Ear Tags?
Ear tags are small metal or plastic identification plates that are pierced through a cow’s ear and allow visual/electronic identification of an animal. Ear tags are used to identify individual cows and track their movements.
Various cattle ear tags are available in the market; however, all have one purpose – cattle identification. If you’re a rancher or a cattle farmer, you must be able to identify animals on your farm. Cattle identification is required for the health monitoring of individual cattle based on their gender, age, and weight. To simplify, it’s the same as getting our government’s unique identification numbers. If you don’t know the number, type, and location of your cattle at the farm, how do you think you’ll be able to run the cattle business successfully? That’s why cattle ear tags are applied as soon as an animal is born or a few days after birth.
What Are the Benefits of Using Cattle Ear Tags?
Let’s talk about the several ways cattle ear tags help in cattle management.
- Disease Identification and Management: Cattle ear tags are essential for disease identification and management. Ranchers can identify livestock that may be falling ill or have an underlying disease and control the spread of the disease. This can help in providing the proper treatment without any delays.
- Efficient Management: With ear tags in place, it’s easier to track the breeding activities of the cattle and their movement. This allows successful livestock management and avoids complications before they arise.
- Increased Productivity: Cattle ear tags are crucial for productivity. Today’s innovative ear tags are embedded with technology, allowing ranchers to monitor their cattle 24/7. This helps care for the cattle and identify possible issues before they arise, consequently leading to better productivity.
EID Tags
EID tags are small button-like tags put in the cattle’s ears and are meant to last a lifetime. One great benefit of EID tags is that they can also be easily scanned and processed using an application on a mobile device. That means you have better flexibility to collect and record data in whichever way you want.
Here’s how the app works:
When you use an EID tag scanner, a session record is automatically generated. Next, you can input some additional information, such as the animal’s ear tag number, weight, and any custom fields as per your requirements. Using the EID tags and the mobile application, you can simply collect the data from a cattle working session and quickly access all the livestock inventory, breedings, calving, and weaning records.
Visual Ear Tags
High-quality cattle visual ear tags are a reliable solution to cattle identification demands. These tags come in various layouts and colors to choose the one that perfectly suits your needs. Moreover, these tags can be used for easy recognition and as part of your management program.
Final Words
Cattle ear tags are essential to a cattle farming business. Investing in the proper ear tags for your cattle is vital if you are a rancher or own a cattle business.
Thanks for reading! We hope this guide to cattle ear tags has helped you.