Eartags: First step to evaluating performance


You have to know who’s who in the field


By Steve Hart (First of two parts)


Which does in your herd are making you money? Who produces sufficient kids to pay for their upkeep? If you have more than a half dozen does, you need written (or computer) records. A dull pencil remembers more than most people. First of all, you need some kind of animal identification so you know who did what. The most common form of ID is eartags.


Many people use scrapie eartags for ID since scra- pie tags are required when the animal is sold commer- cially. Eartags are reasonably priced and can be easily read — unless you made a bad choice of tag and letter color. Australia uses a different color eartag for each year of birth for their sheep, but the numbers are printed in a color that will provide the best readability. The numbers on eartags here in the U.S. are often printed in black or white. White may not show up well on yellow, and black printing may not show up well on red eartags. Also, people with color blindness may not be able to easily read certain color combinations. Generally, it is best to have eartags that have big enough numbers that they can be read without catching the animal. It may be desirable to have a backup identification in the other ear since 1-5% of eartags get lost each year due to getting snagged on wire in a pen or gate or snagged on brush. A tag with smaller numbers can be used in the other ear as a backup, such as a strip eartag or a metal eartag.


Some producers even use ear notches like is used in the Angora


goat registry. The block numbers lend themselves to being misread due to the commonality of number parts. There are fonts that have very different number parts and one can distinguish which number it is if they can only catch a glimpse of part of the number as shown in Figure 1. The industry however, is resistant to change. Some producers put all eartags in the same ear, while others tag males in the right ear and does in the left ear like the standard in the cattle industry (the only time males are right).


The numbering system can start with digit(s) of the year of birth followed by consecutive numbers whereas other producers use con- secutive numbers for the whole herd. Some producers write other information on the back of the eartag such as sire, dam, birth date and whether single or twin.


There is an advantage to double-sided printing on eartags in that they can be read from the front or rear (Animals always stand in the direction that prevents you from seeing the printed side of the ear- tag).


There are eartags that have radio frequency identification built


into them. These require an electronic reader to read them and not likely to benefit the average meat goat producer. Microchips can also be used on animals but a scrapie eartag is still required when they are sold.


Europe is using rumen boluses that contain a microchip. These are used like we use a scrapie tag. The EU keeps track of all animals


14 Goat Rancher | July 2025


Figure 1. This unusual font can be read at different angles, making it easier to distinguish than common block numbers.


In this example, orange tags represent half-blood Kikos and blue tags 75% Kikos. The tag in the right ear indicates females. Buck kids get their tag in the left ear.


from the farm to slaughter with these. They have a 99% retention rate, which is quite good, but still require an electronic reader to iden- tify the animal.


What performance characteristics are important to us and — more importantly — which ones are important to our operation’s bot- tom line? A doe kidding is twice as important as her kid’s growth rate, which is twice as important as carcass characteristics when it comes to factors that affect profitability (as per Richard Browning, TN State Univ.). Therefore, the single, overwhelmingly most important per- formance characteristic is whether that doe kids and how many kids does she raise.


For those doing pen kidding, it is easy to tag the kids and iden- tify kids with the mom and — therefore, you know which does did not kid. Some watch their animals in the pasture and tag them when they catch them and know which ones have kidded and when. However, if you are kidding Spanish goats in the brush, a whole Continued on Page 18


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