IVS International twist marking stick

Details

A marking stick is how you keep track of which ones are done. Open, bred, treated, sorted, kept back, going on the truck. The twist-up barrel lets you advance the stick as it wears instead of holding a shrinking crayon in a wet glove, and it keeps most of the paint off your hands and coat. Marks like these are temporary by design. They are for the day or the week, not for permanent identification, so they work alongside your tags rather than instead of them. Anyone who has tried to sort a hundred head off memory alone learns the value of a stick fairly quickly. Mark high on the hip or the shoulder where you can see it from behind and from the side, and pick a spot that will not immediately rub off on a rail or a bale. On wet or muddy hair the mark will not carry as well, so work over the cleanest hair you can find. Cap it when you are finished and keep it out of a hot cab in July, because heat is what turns a good stick soft and useless.