3 Important Reasons to Tag Your Cattle

Pushes to create a national law to tag instead of branding cattle have caused an uproar in some ranching and cattle-raising communities. People want to farm and raise these animals however they have for their entire lives and might not see the purpose in tagging.

Surprisingly, for many, tagging has many purposes that can help make ranching and cattle raising a lot easier and can save you a lot of time. Here are the top three reasons you should tag your cattle and why branding is falling out of style.

You Can Know The Age and Sex at a Glance

Most cattle ranchers have at least a hundred animals on their property. Although it's important to respect these animals and see them all as separate and important in their way, it's impossible to memorize the history and birth of each of them, as more continue to be born every year. So instead, tagging can mark whether a cow is male or female and clearly show what year they were born. This saves time since you don't have to check the sex manually and ensures that you won't get two cattle confused.

If Cattle Get Away, You Can Be Located

Another big reason for dating is that if your cattle slips away or is stolen, it can easily be identified as your own. Most cattle ear tags offer space to include the name of your ranch or property and a phone number if you want to add one. This can be useful in more population-dense areas, where if a cow gets away, it isn't easy to track it. Many tags can also be chipped so that a quick scan can tell someone to whom the cow belongs. This can be especially useful if a rancher has an issue with thieves that continually attempt to steal their cattle. The tags can identify the animal as theirs and legally protect them.

It's Healthier Than Branding

Many are unsure about using ear tags because they're used to branding as the only option. Branding had a lot of popularity, going back hundreds of years, because of the ease of creating a permanent mark on cattle. The unfortunate thing about branding is that it doesn't tell you when the cattle were born or what the sex of the cattle is. It just tells you what farm that animal belongs to.

Tagging ensures that the animal's information can be updated or changed at any time. So, for example, if the rancher decides to sell their livestock, there's no need to worry about mismatching marks. Instead, the new owner can apply tags of their own to create an easily identifiable animal.

Although there's a little bit of push back against the national need for tagging to become common, there's no need for this resistance. Tagging is a harmless and quick way to ensure that every animal is identifiable, that ranches can be contacted if something happens, and their cattle escape. It's the best process out there and one that shouldn't be put off any longer!