Ordering of cattle tags by livestock farmers is now running on par with previous years, suggesting there will not be any backlog of tag orders when calving gets underway over the coming weeks.

“Orders for 1.384 million tag have been submitted to tag suppliers by herd keepers since the introduction of the new bovine approval process on 1 November 2016,” according to a Department of Agriculture spokesperson this week.

There remains two companies approved to supply tags to cattle farmers: Mullinahone Co-op and Cormac Tagging.

The third applicant, Datamars Ireland, has received Department of Agriculture approval for its tags.

However, it is still establishing the necessary supply arrangements and secure mechanisms for reporting farmer orders to the Department’s AIMS system.

It could be some weeks before these arrangements are finally in place.

The latest figures for orders suggest that the majority of farmers have continued to purchase from Mullinahone Co-op.

It says it has sold 1.3m tag sets, which would be 94% of all tags sold. It got approval to start selling tags six weeks before Cormac did and most livestock farmers, including drystock farmers, already have accounts with Mullinahone.

The Tipperary co-op also says that its total is within 150,000 of previous years.