Methods of cattle identification for the farmer

THE value of management decisions in day-to-day dairy herd management, such as breeding, selection, and culling, depends on accurate identification of individual animals. A report on tests of some methods of cattle identification available to farmers. This article is concerned only with methods of identification of cattle on the farm. It is the farmer\u27s responsibility to brand his stock with his registered brand to comply with the requirements of the Brands Act, in addition to any brands or tags applied for his own management purposes. Any marks other than the registered brand or earmark must be clearly distinguishable from, and incapable of being confused with, the registered brand or earmark

An inventory of apiculture land use surveys

Each year the Apiculture Section of the Western Australian Department of Agriculture undertakes a series of surveys relating to flora prospects, land area suitability or wildfire damage to bee pastures. Such surveys may vary according to the requirements both in time and intensity and the report may be presented as a Departmental file comment or be of such significance to warrant a suitable publication. The Department of Agriculture is at present collating numerous surveys and reports undertaken by a variety of Research Officers in various Divisions. Computer data bases have been set up utilising the Records Management System which will provide access for people wishing to obtain information relating to a specific geographic location. To date, the Divisions of Resource Management and Animal Production (Apiculture Section) have established such bases and searches have been undertaken to retrieve valuable information from Files and Field Note Books for storage and subsequent usage. The Apiculture Section is progressively searching the existing records and files for information relating to land use for the Western Australian Beekeeping Industry. For the benefit of Industry and other land management organisations, an initial summary of information has been prepared via this publication

Freeze branding for cattle identification on the farm

CATTLE identification presents many problems to beef and dairy farmers, and also to research workers. Although many methods are available no one simple method appears to be the complete answer. This article describes the technique of freeze branding for cattle identification on the farm