Beef: Lost ear tags a problem for some producers

Sunday, November 2, 2008

CCIA rules require that cattle leaving the farm must bear proper identification tags. Yet some producers are reporting tag losses as high as 25 per cent

by DON STONEMAN

So you're rounding up your age-verified calves just before the local sale and find that some of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency tags have fallen off. Oops.
But all is not lost, according to Paul Stiles, assistant general manager of the Ontario Cattlemen's Association (OCA).

The possibility of losing tags, says Stiles, "is why we advise producers to put in a management tag as well, and then they have a cross reference to their calving book." If one tag falls out, there is another record of the calf's birth.

A new tag from the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA) must go in a calf's ear and it must be age-verified, before the calf goes to market.

"It's not rocket science," Stiles says. "CCIA doesn't know that the tag fell out and got lost. (The agency) just thinks you had another calf. It's not going to affect our national cattle inventory," he jokes.

If all else fails, a herd manager knows that the calf without the tag is no older than the first-born calf in the herd. The first calf's birth date can be used as a "default."
Losing ear tags is certainly a problem for some producers. One told Better Farming that he had lost tags from seven of 20 heifers and other farmers in his area voiced similar complaints. Cattle industry people we spoke to said that this number was much higher than average.

"Typically we see reasonably good retention rates," says Kerry St. Cyr, executive director of the CCIA in Calgary. Some producers say that they lose one or two per cent of tags. Others estimate losses as high as 25 per cent.

St. Cyr says that the real number "lives somewhere in between," but it's not clear how many tags are lost because CCIA doesn't count them. When untagged cattle arrive at a sales barn, for instance, there's no indication whether the animals lost tags, or were never tagged at all.

The CCIA is not responsible for the tags, St. Cyr stresses. The agency issues tag numbers to manufacturers and they deal with distribution through the networks.

St. Cyr and others say that tags may be lost because they were attached using an improper applicator, or if they weren't crimped down properly, "or the tag itself fails."  Twenty cents from the cost of each tag goes to the CCIA.

Since tagging started as a voluntary program in 1998, more than 100 million tag numbers have been issued for beef and dairy animals in Canada.

Though some producers hate ID tagging, it's not going to go away, says Stiles, and Dan Darling, the OCA's director to the CCIA who calves 200 cows and backgrounds them near Castleton, agrees with that sentiment. He calls the 30 per cent loss rate "extremely high."

Ear tags may get pulled off from cows fed large round hay bales if the strings aren't removed. The same happens with cattle grazing on scrub brush. Dual purpose tags that also contain management information are more likely to fall out.

"There are a lot of different reasons why tag retention for some people isn't as good," Darling says.

"Some guys swear up and down that if you use the right applicator with the right tag and put (tags) close the head, there isn't a problem," Stiles says. He notes that ID tags have been a problem raised at annual meetings "year after year after year."Stiles says that Australia is perceived as putting tags through a more rigorous testing system than does Canada. The new Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags used in Canada appear to be retained better than the old bar code models, which are still in use on older animals.

Cattle raised on the farm where they were born can be untagged, but there are exceptions beyond that. "There are no instances when (cattle) don't need a tag when they leave the farm," Stiles says. That includes lending a bull to a neighbour and even sending 4-H calves to a local show.

Stiles and other industry leaders warn that ID tags are here to stay, and producers must learn to work with them, regardless of the amount of grief associated with their use. BF