What happened to age verification with this falls calf run in Saskatchewan

[SADIE]

In the last two weeks as the auction market sales are finishing up with their bred cow sales to close out 2010.

I have visited with long-time contacts at three markets in Saskatchewan. The general comments are----All fall thousands of calves sold every week and not one order came in for "AGE VERIFICATION of Calves". Most of these calves went to Alberta Feedlots.

The comments are---they even stopped announcing that the groups are age-verified.

Looks like a pattern similar to the old "green Tag Preconditioning programs" that were a "fad" that came and went over the years.

Just food for thought?????

[ALLFARMER]

With the tags that get ripped out in trailers or bale feeders or bush or rustlers in my opinion they system won't last long. We nead to move to the Australian system as ear tags fail so easily. I don't RFID anything here till just before shipping.

[kato]

When you sell at a presort you lose any reason to age verify calves. There are a lot of presorts here. We've taken calves to presorts this fall, and some to regular sales. At the regular sale they will announce it, but you don't get any extra money for your trouble.

We've all been asked to do so much over the past few years to satisfy all the new regulations for tracing, environment, and whatever, and as far as I can see, no one has received one thin dime for the effort.

I think everybody's tired of doing the extra work and not having a benefit out of it. Besides, from what I hear, age papers don't mean a thing if the teeth don't match. In other words, if you have a young age verified animal that loses baby teeth early, the paper is worthless, because the teeth are what matters.

Until the paper's worth more than the dental, and there's some money to be earned for the work, this thing is not going to go anywhere, IMHO.

Show me some money, and I'm all for it. Force me to do the work so someone else can make money off of it when I don't, and I'm not so happy to do it.

[greybeard]

Those button tags we use will never work in the long run. The plastic gets hard in about 4 years and the stems break with very little resistance. I’ve seen it happen when pulling strings off a bale and a cow walked in between and snagged a string. Waste of our effort but they will never admit it after spending millions and trumpeting about traceability.
The next thing I expect to see is a justifiable audit where we have to make our AgStability numbers match the tags we purchase.

[T.N.T.]

We tag them,but this was the first year i didn't age verify them.If they don't want to pay me any extra for age verifying them,then why bother?

[ProFarmer]

age verify 100 tags in 2009 use 98 so two left, over right.Can't throw away leftovers sit in tag box.Selling 2011 calves in fall of 2011 loading truck notice a tag missing so,,,, go to the tag box and find a loose tag.Calf is tagged all is good,but that calf is now overage and the feedlot is about to lose $150 a head.... good deal huh.

[burnt]

Profarmer, I use my leftover tags from previous years on cull cows that have lost theirs when they go to town. So I guess I've got some old cows that appear to be very young!

[ProFarmer]

yes but you are not selling age verified cows then and taking the hit. These tags are just teaching us to lie... Ive got a pile of cut out tags in the garbage by the chute. I am not taking the hit for sombody elses problem. Actually you don't have to cut out a tag over 4 years old, just give them a little tug and they are so rotten they will just fall out.

[grassfarmer]

Why on earth are you age verifying "tags" and not "cattle"? Age verify your 98 calves and use the 2 other tags whenever you want them - and supply the appropriate age verification on the two animals you apply the tags to. Or use them on cull cows and don't bother age verifying them.

[ProFarmer]

Not every farmer has axcess to the internet, so just age verifies a block of tags and stupid rules allow it. The feedlots to cover their butts, and I do not blame them ,is to cut out over age tags and garbage them. Trust me it is being done and inspectors should start monitoring all imports into the country before bringing down a heavy hand on producers...I hear only one container in 3 even gets inspected. They are more interested on bylingual packaging than contents. Fun the other day got a can of mixed fruit product of canada....it conatained pinapple,global warming Eh!!

[15444]

I agree 100% ProFarmer. I won't lie. I have cut out tags that aren't age verified and replaced them with ones that are. I don't cross reference tags. If I have extra age-verified tags left over, I use them in whatever is going to market. When I still had pre-1999 cows, I aged them as 2000 cows and sent them south. I wasn't about to take a 20-30 cent price hit on the account of the government not doing their due diligence in preventing the BSE crisis. I know piles of other producers that do as well. A very small majority do follow the rules, and then whine about how much regulations are on the industry and how the world is unfair to them. I own the animal. In many cases, I bought the tags that are in that animal. I can do whatever I like with 'my' tags.

Like one old fellow told me once, "Rules are for the stupid and ignorant who don't have an opinion".

I only tag when I ship to market, so the only animals that have had button tags in them are ones that I bought (breeding bulls, open heifers). So far the longest lasting button has lasted 2 years, and it is so badly deteriorated that if I blew on it too hard, it would fall out too. These are Allflex tags and isn't a new problem to them.

[grassfarmer]

Oh well - there goes any shred of credibility that the Canadian beef age verification system may have claimed. I hope you are real proud of yourselves guys because there is nothing that will bring a rigid, strictly enforced audit/financial penalty system as quickly as this type of blatant cheating the system.
I don't see what the problem is with age verifying your animals date of birth. Most farms already keep calving records that would make it easy.

[SADIE]

Lets go back to the topic of this thread.

In Saskatchewan we do not get paid for our RFID eartags when we age verify these animals via the tag numbers. Now when we sell them at an auction market like I do and most others there is no premium---The price is paid on the quality of the animals and not one extra cent paid whether they are age verified or not.

Why should one do the extra work and put data into a data bank to get a piece of paper that has no value.

Nothing but a "GONG SHOW".

[15444]

GF,

You can't honestly be as blind as you are portraying yourself to be to think that a few meager individuals on a agricultural website have destroyed a government system of livestock identification, can you?

In the real world, many, many producers have been doing these same practices, and it will be the continued actions of these people that (I hope) will bring down the system.

A independent person won't go quietly into the night and roll over when something is shoved down their throats.

I haven't met a farmer/rancher/producer in the last 10 years that has told me that they specifically asked their regional/provincial/national representatives for a national ID system. Yet it magically appeared and has a whole conglomeration of rules and stipulations that have been added to it over the years and into the future. Did I miss those votes?

Some people like being controlled by their governments, it gives them a kind of security blanket. I'm not one of them. Down with the system, and if it results in closed borders again, so be it. I wasn't for opening them back up anyways.

[kato]

What? You've got to be kidding.

Age verification and ID are two different things. Whether we asked for it or not, we've got ID. If you don't want to follow the rules, then work to have them changed. In the meantime, screwing things up for everyone else is not the way to go.

I don't mind slapping a tag in for tracing. It would be nice if they would stay there, but that's another topic.

The fact is that we're not getting paid for the age verification. We verify ours, but that's mainly so we have age verified cows in the future. Cows are the one animal where it pays. Unless someone specifically asked for the ages on our calves, we keep the papers at home.