"What did you do today?"

Often times at the dinner table, I get some strange looks from my family when I answer the question "What did you do today?".  Recently, they were quite astonished by the fact that I spent several hours cleaning cows ear tags!

You see, record keeping is very important to our dairy.  While we have over 1000 cows, each one is on a separate schedule in terms of pregnancy, vaccinations, needing a vet check or needing a hoof trim...just to name a few.

So on any given day, when one of the above tasks requires certain cows to be found, it is imperative that we do without error and of course no one wants to spend a huge amount of time searching.  The task of "cleaning ear tags" is not something we've done before and perhaps the need to do it was perpetuated by the fact that two of us are now in our 40's - perhaps are eyes are not what they used to be.  Anyway, tags get dirty and fade, making them hard to read.

This girls tags are very difficult to read.  Not only because they are somewhat dirty, but also the ink tends to fade over time.  Since this girl is 8 years old it certainly was time to freshen up the paint on her tag!

That's me using a quarter to scratch the dirt off the tag.  This day we did a couple hundred cows - I sorta felt like I was playing the lottery after a while!!

The finished product!  Now when we sort through this group of cows, looking for her we should have no problems finding No. 2741!

Another cow before...

And after...