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Ear Tag Update
ELDON COLE
MT. VERNON, MO.
You may recall last month I put a picture in my letter of a 1960’s tag.
At the Beef Improvement Federation in Brookings, South Dakota which I attended, a speaker, Mark Trotter at Central Queensland University, spoke about the up and coming, smart ear tags. The smart tags will have many uses but come with a fairly high price tag. Since technology usually improves and it gets cheaper. We will likely see them used for, location, behavior, health and many other management/records practices.
Examples of their use he mentioned include: bull mating activity; weights; calving; temperament; disease detection; grazing and rumination behavior as a measure of pasture quality; virtual fencing like some folks now have to keep their pets on their property; theft; insects that reduce animal performance.
Today, items such as this tag are used on research projects, but in a bulkier package and the $50 plus price tag will limit their use but it will happen. ∆
ELDON COLE: Extension Livestock Specialist, University of Missouri
1960’s Tag
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