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It's been a holiday season full of heavy-bred mama cows here at Brooks Cattle Company. Our 2025 calving season will kick-start this month and we are full of preparations for the upcoming batch of babies. The past couple of weeks, we have been re-tagging cows to prepare for their matching cow tags. Soon, all of them will be brought home to the headquarters so they can calve under close supervision.
Bella Supervising
Each cow at BCC receives an ear tag with their own number and color. The color changes depending on the age of the cow. For example, the animal pictured above is a first-calf heifer and is called "57B" for her blue ear tag. When she calves, her calf will get an identical ear tag in a smaller size within the first few hours of birth. This allows us to quickly identify a cow/calf pair and make sure that the babies are being taken care of.
We started our retags at the Ranch processing our first-calf heifers. First-calf heifers are two years old and are preparing to have their first calf. We pay special attention to these girls, and they have their calves closest to the house so that we can quickly intervene if they have any difficulties.
Here's a sneak peek behind the scenes of the day we worked a larger group of cows. Long before we get to the working facility, Garrett and Jeremy have been discussing which cows will be grouped with which (often based on sire groups, meaning the bulls who bred the upcoming calf crop) and which cows will be getting a new tag color. They use data collected on each individual animal throughout their life to make these decisions.
Once we're ready to go, the cows are caught in a catch-pen. We sort if needed (often by tag color or number), and then get the working facility fired up. Everyone has a job to do while processing. On this particular day, Garrett walked groups up to the tub, and Jamie walked the cows up the alley. Jeremy was manning the hydraulic squeeze chute and tagging, and Elisa was responsible for documenting tag changes and labeling test tubes. Steven and Courtney were busy feeding at another property, but they play important roles in processing by working at the squeeze chute or moving cows up the alley.
Once they get to the squeeze chute, Elisa checks the paperwork to see if a tag change needs to happen. If so, she loads the proper tag into the tagger. The old tag is removed, the new tag is applied, and the change is documented. Later, she enters the data into our management system and makes sure that everything is accurate.
This year, we also introduced blood pregnancy testing. This was quick and just took a blood sample from the tail. For cows that appeared open (not pregnant) or short-bred (early in pregnancy), we sent off the blood samples to learn more. The increased accuracy of blood testing will allow us to make the right management decisions for these cows.
We are still a couple of weeks away from calving, so after processing the cows went back onto pasture. We'll make the trip to bring them to headquarters to calve soon, but for now, we're busy getting their pens ready for new babies.
We saw some beautiful sunsets after we wrapped up working. We're grateful to have this life.
A few more photos
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