Keeping the heifers and their calves straight can be quite a job. So in addition to tagging them we move out the calves and mothers into a different pasture when the calves are two days old. This decreases the confusion when new ones are born.
We ride through the herd and gather up the two day old or older calves. The way we keep track of their age is by putting a different color button on the back of the tag, also writing each one down.
The babies are reluctant to move sometimes and they get confused. The horse is nudging the calf along.
It is a slow process and requires a lot of patience from both the horse and rider.
A patient mommy helps too.
We take them in small bunches, which makes it easier on all of us. They will stay in this pasture for two days, then moved to another pasture after that so that we can start the process all over again. We got out over 20 today, only 300 or so to go. haha
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