Agriculture Working For You: Keeping Track of the Beef Herd

("Barnyard Surprise" by The Whole Other)

- Hi, my name's Capri Stiles-Mikesell.

I work for Pennsylvania 4F through Penn State Extension.

Welcome to Turning Leaf Farms, the home of Mid-State Mains.

Here, we raise Maine-Anjou beef cattle for exhibition, and to go into the local food supply.

We have over 40 animals on our farm, and each animal will get an identification tag when they are born.

Today, I'm going to be showing you the importance of tracking our animals to ensure that they are healthy and safe on a daily basis, especially during calving season.

Here we are on our daily morning check.

Our main focus is to get an accurate head count.

This is harder than you might think.

We watch each animal take a few steps and look for signs of anything out of the ordinary.

This is calving season, and these cows all have a calf at their side.

It is vitally important to make sure each calf is actively nursing and thriving.

This calf was born this morning.

She and her mother will go out to pasture in a couple of days.

The tag will ensure she is accounted for on a daily basis.

Individual identification is also used in our recordkeeping to track the age of the animal, feeding efficiencies, genetic tendencies, and the lifetime health of the herd.

Ear tagging is very similar to getting your ears pierced.

Proper placement of the tag is a relatively simple process that causes minimal discomfort to the calf.

That's a good girl.

So this calf we know was born April 12th.

And she was the 10th calf born this year.

On the bottom it says who her sire was, No Worries.

And then on the back of the tag, we have C12, which is the cow that gave birth to this calf.

So the tagging is a vital process of keeping our accurate records.

The records will help us make decisions throughout the year on what animals are most productive and help us meet our goals of providing quality local beef at an affordable price.

Thank you to everyone involved in the process of beef production.

I encourage each one of you to support your local farmers and small businesses by shopping and buying locally.

("Barnyard Surprise" by The Whole Other)