Choosing a TattooHow To Choose A Tattoo For Your Rabbit.
Are you sitting there, scratching your head wondering what you put in your rabbits ear for a tattoo? Whether a new or old time rabbit breeder, we've all been there at some point, and may still occasionally wonder if we should change our ways. To show your rabbit under ARBA (American Rabbit Breeders Association), then they must have a tattoo in their left ear. It must be eligible though, or else the judge can disqualify it from competition. So always check your tattoo's prior to a show! Does ARBA Assign Tattoo's? No, ARBA does not assign tattoo's. They do not tell you what your rabbit's tattoo needs to be, nor how you have to do it. There is no list of previous tattoo's or anything like that. It is completely up to you what you do for tattoo's! Well, almost. There are a few things to follow. It use to be that you could do anything for a tattoo, whether it be a heart or a smiley face. However, the problem is that secretaries must put these tattoo's into the computer prior to the show, and can be hard if you did a drawing or something. So ARBA came out a few years ago that tattoo's must be alpha-numeric, meaning you can only use letters A-Z and numbers 0-9. Other than that you get to choose your rabbits tattoo and you get to choose the system you use. As long as it fits in the ear and the judge can read it, it can be anything from ABC, 123, H, 5, A98 or BUBBLES. You can use as many numbers or letters as you wish up to twenty characters including spaces, and you do not need both. *Another note, if using names remember that nothing vulgar, offensive or rude can be done. Keep it clean! How Do I Choose What To Tattoo? Well, that is completely up to you. Pick a system that another breeder uses, or come up with your own. There are a lot out there. Some a lot more confusing than others. Some breeders will just do the rabbits name or partial name. Their tattoos look like BUDDY, BUGS or BEN. Others like to use a fancy code system, usually mixing letters and numbers together. The most frequent, and one that I personally use, is the parents initials. So Bugs (sire) and Lily (dam) litter would be BL1, BL2, BL3, etc. What gets confusing is when you use a code that involves things like number for month, even for buck, uneven for doe and things like that. If you can find something that makes sense to you, that's what is important! I get really confused when someone talks about how they're using a system that's like.... number for month born, B or D for gender, number for year born, number in litter, maybe even parents initials in there or something. This confuses me, but it is what works for some and when explained properly can make a lot of sense and seems like a good way to remember without looking at pedigrees. Another system that works well is either using your rabbitry initials or breed initials plus numbers. So my rabbitry initials are MR. MR1 would be the first baby tattooed, where MR57 would be the 57th tattooed. Same with breed initials. So the Havana's would be HV, Mini Rex being MR. HV48 would be the 48th Havana born and MR31 would be the 31st Mini Rex born. It is completely up to you how and what you choose to tattoo your rabbits. If I only keep one or two from a litter then I may actually just use the rabbits name for the tattoo. Check out Part 1 & 2 in Rabbit Tattooing!
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