FEED SUPPLEMENTS AND MINERALS FROM POWERFILL
We are stocked up for all your liquid supplement needs, as well as some of the specialty items you can use to target and balance your feed, such as POWERBOOST mineral vitamin energy drench, POWERBAC feed additive for calves, Levucell active dry yeasts, all our regular minerals and any of the custom blends you need, as well as ration balancing consulting and marketing advice. We also carry RFID tags as well as providing a wireless reader and tagging registration service to help you properly handle your information with CCIA.
Give us a call for more information.

RFID Tags? CCIA? Age Verification?
What does it mean for you?

   Most of us in the industry are well aware at this point that changes to cattle tagging have taken place again and we are all now required to be using Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags when tagging our herds. This is in addition to any dangle tagging that you wish to do to help you visually keep track of cattle as most of us are used to. The Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA) has done an excellent job of producing literature to help you understand better why this is necessary, what your responsibilities are and what all of these new terms mean. There are posters and brochures pretty much everywhere you can get involved with cattle identification and you can also access this information on their website at www.canadaid.ca.
   Most of the RFID tags you can get for your cattle are button style tags that are about the size of a loonie. For the most part all you need to decide is how many to buy since the tags are mostly the same from all manufacturers. There are new ones out however that incorporates both a dangle tag and the RFID component in one. They will be slightly more expensive of course, but this eliminates the need for two separate tags. There are ups and downs for all tags and that will never change. A difficult hurdle for tagging, is cattle getting their tags caught on a fence or something and tearing them out. You would need to decide what style of tag you prefer in order to make that as pain free of a process as possible. A suggestion is that if you assume that some of your cattle will inevitably loose a tag here and there, that having a system where you tag a dangle tag in one ear and the RFID button tag in the other would help to keep track of identification. You can cross reference numbers in your records if a calf or cow still has one or the other tag. Then you can effectively make accurate adjustments when you retag if necessary.
   When you purchase RFID tags, the distributor is required to register the purchase to CCIA within 24 hours. There have been some problems and as a result some producers had to struggle to submit the data that they need to send in to CCIA for their cattle identification.
   We are now handling a line of RFID tags and tagging supplies for you. As a new service, we are able to help properly record and enter your tags and data to the CCIA website as an authorized third party for you. We have purchased a RFID reader that we can use to help you enter your cattle data automatically to a live computer spreadsheet, information that can be uploaded to the CCIA website as well. We will guarantee to have your information dealt with professionally, discretely, and on time. We will help you walk through the issues that can get in your way, show you how to do it yourself or take care of it for you. Call us for more information on the line of RFID tags, feedlot tags, applicators, markers and various accessories that we now carry.

HOW’S YOUR BATTING STANCE?

   I used to coach fastball, and I played it for many years. One thing I saw way too often was a player who technically speaking couldn’t swing a bat to save his life, but consistently hit every ball thrown at him. There was a never-ending parade of people trying to CORRECT the batting stance and  swing, in spite of the fact it was magically working already. Inevitably, that player stopped being able to hit the ball, and usually within an hour they were slumping hard.
   On the flip side, a hitter in a slump is willing to take any advice to fix his problem, and usually that is when new discoveries are made by them in understanding the mechanics of hitting, and things start to get better. This suggests two valuable bits of advice. 1. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and 2. If it isn’t working, figure it out.
   The same thing can apply to a cattle producer. Many can miraculously make a profit out of what seems to be sheer luck, while others attempting the same batting stance will miss the ball each time. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it is a good motto to live by, especially when you are dealing with your livelihood. But when you consistently don’t make your margin at the auctions, and you suffer from bad luck in herd health and issues relating to that, maybe that is the time you might consider changing your approach.
   The market for natural beef is growing stronger every day. The demand is higher all the time, and the risk to the producer is no more (and normally less) than conventional markets, while the return on investment can show better profits in a bonus grid system.
   The major step for most producers is that to qualify in natural beef programs, they need to have consistent and accurate records that show birth dates, treatment dates, reasons and types of treatments.  If you can show that you know which ones should be removed from the batch due to treatments, then you can keep the rest of them on contract. If you can’t, then they normally have to exclude the whole group. Some producers we know, have been disqualified from natural programs due to lack of record keeping. The calves need to be verified natural starting at birth and that needs to be proven to the programs as the calves are bought and sold from cow/calf operators to feeders and then to finishers and packers. This is all dependant on the record keeping.
   Here is a scary quote for some of you. “You can’t feed your calves Rumensin to sell them into Natural Beef programs.” Why is that so scary? Because most guys don’t know that they can get positive and reliable results with other, more probiotic products.
   Of course we have some of those products (active yeasts, liquid supplements, and so on). But better than that, we have the know how to help you find your margins on your beef again, as well as helping you with reliable methods of on farm record keeping if you need help with that. We don’t want to mess with your batting average, but if you want help, call us. We can help.