Tattoo ID

Hi everyone--I was wondering if anyone out there is still using a tattoo for the ID's. I am in Penna and we must have 2 official ID's on our deer. Farm Tag, micro chip, Registered Tattoo or State ear tags. I use a farm number tag and tattoo in the ear. I use a small animal tattoo kit which of course is messy when it comes to tattooing the fawns. I have heard of some deer famers using a pen tattoo made for rabbit tattooing. Has anyone out there used one of the pens. I heard that sometimes instead of the ear they tattoo the inner part of the back leg. I was just wondering if anyone has used this type of tattoo and is it easier to do then the crip tattoo kits. Any response would be nice to hear from another deer farmer. And please I do know about micr chips but I haven't gotten into that yet. My husband and I are only in the business for 3 years and we do not have a holding pen or drop shoot yet so we fell right now we cannot go that route.

We tatoo also. I am going to get information on the micro chip. I read one of Isaac@AppleCreek posts under youth tagging. You do it when you tag, so for fawns no chute required. It may also be compatible with the GMS Software? I have the software, but am not real comfortable with it. (love cattlepro, which has a elk module and working on a whitetail deer module)

For now we tatoo the fawns like our calves.

We have been using microchips for probably 12 years or more now. You insert them when the fawns are born and they have them for life. They are an official ID. The second official ID is a TB tag put on by the vet. We can also get tags from the state to use. We have our own color coding system that we use on our deer for visual reads.



We had someone develop a computer program just for us for our deer. Since we have been in business nearly 14 years, there weren't any available when we started. Now that we have all our data in this program, we aren't likely to change. We put the chip number in a field that is unique - in other words two deer can't have the same number. They won't unless I have a typo - and then the computer will catch it. We have a herd of about 650 + animals and this is the only way we can keep track of things.

Wild Rivers Whitetails: That is a lot of animals! I don't believe my farm will get that big. I don't have the land for it. My husband would like to get the herd up to 50 and try to keep it at that. I do use a software program just to keep track of my bloodlines and breeding. It will tell me if I interbreed when I put my breeding plan in it. It wasn't an expense program. I don't like the way it prints out the petagrie so I do that on my own using excel spread sheet. I will have to check more into the microchips I guess. I was just wondering if anyone else uses some other kind of tattoo devise then the small pet tattoo kit. Thanks to both of you repling to my post.