Cow Sorting Tip

 

It’s been a very hectic few weeks since I posted on my blog . I’ve had a lot of big writing and speaking projects in addition to our normal fall ranch work and once I finally got caught up and had time to get back to my blog, I couldn’t get my photos to upload. So life got in the way for another week but am back to try again!

One of our ranch work to-dos was getting our calves and cull cows sold. We actually sold on November 1^st but it’s just been a real challenge to carve out enough time to blog about it.

After helping out our neighbors ship calves and sort their cull cows the week before, my husband and I decided to resurrect his dad’s handy sorting trick for all the cull cows we planned to sell. While helping our neighbors it was hard to remember all the eartag numbers to look for and the crew was constantly hollering out numbers to verify if it was one to be sorted off. This triggered a trick my husband remembered that his dad used to do and we decided we’d implement it the next week when it was our turn to sort calves for sale day and sort out cull cows. With the drought we had a bigger list to cull than normal.

When you have several guys helping and a whole list of cows to be sorted off, it gets hard to for everybody to remember all of the eartag numbers. Instead of my husband being the only one with a list, we decided to write out the list in big numbers on a piece of cardboard that we could place in a spot for everybody to see.

This way nobody had to try to remember all the different numbers and didn’t have to ask or verify. We also used the list to check off the numbers as the cows get sorted.

The sign made it easy for everybody to know what numbers to look for and it eliminated a lot of questioning and asking about an eartag number when a new bunch was brought in to sort. Once my husband brought up the idea, I volunteered to write them out. After I made the first list, I realized having the numbers listed numerically is even better so I made two lists. I also wrote all the numbers down on an index card I kept in my pocket with a pencil.

 

This worked really well for us and I just had to share the sorting tip because it was a lot easier on the crew that helped us and made the sorting process less stressful.