Cow Detectives

I have just got home from my grandparents house where my family and I have been very busy tattooing calves. (I will talk more about tattooing a little later) We have spent the entire day sorting cows and calves, tattooing and tagging Calves with radio frequency buttons. What always amazes me when we do things like this is how well my grandpa and my dad know their cows.

This year seems to have been the perfect storm of events that lead to cows loosing the ear tags that identify them. (You can see on these pictures how all of our cattle have a number on their tag so that we can easily identify them.) This year being so cold and then so muddy and wet has led to lots of our cows loosing ear tags meaning when we brought them in we had quite a few that most people would assume we would not be able to identify.

 It always amazes me how my dad and Grandpa can walk into a pen full of all solid red cows and tell which cow is which. They know each cow by the way it looks even though they are all the same colour and have no distinguishing marks on them.  My sister and I are always surprised at the fact that they could probably identify all 100 of our cows without looking at the tag but still mix up our names!