Today marks a small milestone on the 2010 Trio Angus calendar. With the spring AI program done & the cows out with the back-up bulls another year of intense record keeping has virtually come to an end!
No matter what business your in there is always record keeping to be done. Trio Angus is no different.
- For the cows there are joining records, calving records, spring & autumn inventories to submit & mature cow weights to be collected.
For the calves their birth weights must be recorded along with their NLIS & visual tag numbers. As they grow there are 200, 400, 600 day weights to be recorded aswell as well as ultrasound scan data, scrotal measurements, hip height measurements & DNA test results. All of this data then has to be compiled & sent away so that our cattle can be registered & their EBVs can be calculated.- For the sale bulls we have to keep track of invoices & payments, delivery records & also registration transfers.
- There are also embryo transfer records & calving records that need to be kept for the recipient cows.
- Aswell as keeping the health records updated for all the cattle
(plus all the finanical records!)
As you can see a stud breeders recording requirements are quite demanding & we spend several hours a week just keeping track of everything. Every time I glance at a sale catalogue I think about how much data has been collected & recorded to present me with each bulls information, it really is quite amazing!
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| I found the picture below on the Kansas Cattle Ranch blog, this would make tagging a newborn calf a challenge! |