With all of the concerns about the source of people's food these days, age and source verification are becoming much more common in the livestock business. That means that people like to know where their food originated and the path it took to get to their table.
It is not mandated yet, but our family already does this by tagging our calves with E-ID tags. This gives them an electronic number that is stored in a database so when they are sold, they know exactly where they originated and how old they are. This is required for exporting them to certain countries such as Japan.
We also had a guest worker with us today. My mom made an appearance! It was kind of fun to have her out there with us. She is usually stuck in the house. I don't even remember the last time she has helped us with running cattle through the chute.
Her job was to record the number we gave the calves at birth, along with
their current weight and the # of EID tag dad placed in their ear.
I had a nice little chat with one of my heifers while she waited for her turn in the chute.
This what our whole operation looked like. My job was to push the cattle through the alleyway and into the chute.
We got a new chute a year or two ago and it comes with nice scales. Mom sat in the mule and had a front row seat to the weight readout. She also had to record whether it was a steer or heifer and what color it was, along with who it belonged to.
The worst part of today was getting covered in dirt. I'm still coughing the stuff up and probably will be for at least another day. We didn't water things down first and it was just powder. When I came inside and took off my cap, I had a dirt line on my forehead. Nice.
I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Labor Day weekend!
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