New Technology for Cattle

All my calves this year will have the CCIA bar code tags because our Co-Op did not have enough RFID tags last February when I bought my calving supplies. I wish they would combine the RFID tags with a dangle tag. Next year I will have to put in a dangle tag to identify the calf in the pasture, and the RFID tag to sell them. Would be nice to use one tag only.

No question the bar code and RFID tags have been an added cost, but the benifits to our industry are tremendous.

John

Need a few items from Vinvents as well. My shop is not heated, thus hurry is not on agenda. Have you been to any eq. auctions this spring. How are prices going in that area? I had planned on going to Filsons Good Friday auction in Ilderton. I went to Detriot that AM, couple of hold ups along the way, ddn't get home until noon, thus lost my ambition to stand around in cold. Also thought about the auction where Mitch got the combine. Family comings and goings got in the way of that one. By the time Easter Sunday rolled around Marg. and I were alone, so decided to explore central MI. We got lost a couple of times. Great part about getting lost on rural side roads, amazing how many old Farmalls you see.

Speaking of items you see on rural roads. 40 years ago two couples in Nova Scotia were heading for a trip to New England. The driver and owner of car had a reputation of being a bad driver, biggest problem, he was nosy and always looking in yards to see what was going on. Someone warned the passenger couple of this suggesting they wouldn't drive anywhere with the car owner couple. On their arrival back from the Boston States as many Nova Scotians used to refer to New England back then, the passenger couple was asked how the trip went and in particular Fred's driving. The passenger responded, "Once we got past Truro, and he no longer knew local residents, he tramped the pedal to 60 mph, and in that situation he is the finest of drivers."

So you see, by exploring away from home, you never get a bad driving reputation. The down side is, local drivers don't realize your bad habits as well as the home crowd would.

Sounds like Michael has it all figured out, as do the folks up there who are shipping beef to Asia. Nobody ever said our politicians down here were very smart at economics things (or anything else).

Stan

A local meat shop is expanding from 20 head a week to 200 head a week. They are building a big federally licenced abatoir for foreign exports.

This is a backwoods place too, I can't imagine what the big cattle places out west are doing?

I know a friend is looking at renewing his european exporting business.

We aren't getting hardly anything for cattle right now. Everyone is keeping their cattle for now and it make a great hay market but I don't know. There are a lot of old girls wandering around out there.

Cookstown has an ad in our local weekly paper this week trying to get people to ship cull cows through them, guess they're losing buyers because so many are going to Gencor or being fed to the coyotes.

Cookstown has an ad in our local weekly paper this week trying to get people to ship cull cows through them, guess they're losing buyers because so many are going to Gencor or being fed to the coyotes.