The problems with putting eratags on piglets are :
a) You need to allow space for the ear to grow. If the pig is going to be a breeding sow, the ear will be considerably bigger, so if you don't allow growth room (large air gap at the edge) the tag gorws inton the ear, and can acuse distress and infection. We have had to cut out tags from pigswhich we have bought for breeding as they were too close (allowed for medical reasons) and removing a tag takes a good deal of skill and patience (both yours and the pigs). As Sally says there is also a much greater risk of earb damage due to play etc.
b) If you bought a fattener with a tag at say 8 weeks old, you must also tag or slap it when you take it to the abattoir - pigs must have ID of the holding it is travelling from. Therefore the pig would end up with two ID's, which at best means the abattoir has to do two reads to check which pig it is, and at worst adds confusion, as the abattoir only reads one (presuming both to be the same), and then can't find the paperwork.
Ear tattoos are the hardest thing to read on a clean pig, let alone one that has been outside for a while - and again we are after a proportional response here.
I would argue that any ID on a pig (or sheep for that matter) is pointless, as all the authorities need to know is that an animal has moved onto holding b from holding a. If disease breaks out and holding a has it, all holding b's animals are killed anyway, no matter where they came from. Trouble is that authorities think we all flout the rules and without ID would move animals without telling anyone, so they went down the route where we start id'ing things, and then when sheep lose tags, we get to individual ID, then EID with cross referencing - anyone would think we were handling nuclear watse. So we now know every cow in GB, but have no idea how many people live here ! Hey ho Sunday rant over !
Topic: Pig ID in Scotland (Read 8253 times)
