How many of you are going to Age Verify your calves this fall? I am just about to send my file in, I have all the #'s and birth dates so I will do it. It won't cost me anything to do it, and it may cost me something if I don't. We sell our heavy steers in a one owner bunch but if we graded everything I wouldn't bother. None of the stockyards are sorting age verified from non-age verified so there is no point in doing it if they won't be sold as such. So far I haven't heard of anyone seeing a premium for age verified, and I have not heard of anyone being docked for non-age verified calves.

One thing we did do, although it will not affect this years calf crop, is to go with the Express Verified program. We vaccinate with a BVD vaccine as it is, so to change over to the Express10 vaccine didn't cost us anything. In fact, we saved a bit of money. We will see if it makes a difference next year. It sounds like a good program to me.

Randi