A Rancher’s Ingenuity: Homemade Mobile Calf Pen Makes Tagging a Breeze

Tagging a newborn calf can be a tricky prospect in the best circumstances, and downright dangerous if the mama isn’t happy.

Clint Howard, who runs 120 commercial Simmental-Angus cross cows and plants 1,600 acres of wheat, canola and barley in Alberta, Canada, recently shared a snap of his mobile “calf tagging beast,” bringing a creative solution to what used to be a two-person job.

“We needed a safer and easier way to tag calves, which used to take two people. One to grab the calf and keep the cow back. The other doing the needling and tagging. We also dehorn when we tag them now too. Before we would wait and process everything before they went out to pasture,” he says.

Howard says his father was the one who came up with the pen and took on the construction, welding the front and back bumpers and then building the pen from there. The lift mechanism is powered with a Honda motor that drives a hydraulic pump in the bed of the truck. The hydraulic lines run to a control lever that’s mounted in the cab.

While heifers are calved in the barnyard and tagging is done by hand, the herd’s cows are calved on a 20-acre pasture, which makes the mobile pen especially useful when time is of the essence.

“We try to tag/needle the calves when they are 12-24 hours old. After 36 hours they can be just about impossible to catch,” Howard says.

The pen is surprisingly easy to use, as long as you’re careful to keep away from other cows and calves while chasing a calf down.

“It will come down quite fast if you want it to. So, you have to make sure the calf is not under it when you let it down,” he adds.

He also notes that though they tried using it to corral cows that needed treatment, they eventually stopped because the cows were too hard on the truck.

Check out the video below for a shot of the pen in action.