In June of last year, the Texas Animal Health Commission put a new traceability program for cattle in place that goes into effect in 2013.

“ The new law that is in effect January 1, of 2013 will require that all adult cattle 18 months of age or older will have to have a permanent type of identification at change of ownership, change of ownership meaning when it goes from your farm to the sale barn, from your farm to another farm, from one ranch to the other ranch.

Darryl Slovacek is an inspector for the Texas Animal Health Commission.

“The approved types of animal identification are our metal brucellosis clip, the silver clip you know if you’ve dealt with cattle you’ll have seen it before. It can be the yellow or orange brucellosis vaccination tag, or it can be the RFID tag which is new to the industry. It’s an electronic type of identification where you have to have a specific reader to collect that data.”

The tag information is entered into a data base. In registered cattle, breed association tattoos will also be accepted.

“If we do have a disease outbreak or we need to trace something back, we’ll just punch in that particular ear tag and it’ll show where that cow, the last place of record that cow, change of ownership took place.”

Some sale barns will be tagging animals prior to their sale.

“You need to check with your individual sale barns to see how they’re going to handle the tagging and IDing of these cattle.”

I’m Bob French, looking at Brazos Valley Agriculture, From The Ground Up.