I am seeing the buttons, properly placed, stay in better than a tag. Tags get caught on hay feeders. Retained heifers and cows get a 2-pc set of button and also a visual tag which also has the same rfid number on it. Steers get a one pc combo visual/rfid tag since it only needs to be in a year+.

Readers vary a lot in their ability to read a tag. They are not all the same. The components shown on this page seem to work for me. A brand is probably better - but hard to read into a computer ;)

Seems to me that rfid is a management decision, not a government decision. Source verification seems like a good thing.

Jim (with just 15 cows)