Why Tattoo?

There are a couple of reasons to tattoo your rabbit or goat. The main reason would be if you are taking the animal to show, and they need a tattoo for identification purposes. A secondary reason, mainly for rabbits, would be so that you know for sure which rabbit is which if you are breeding and need to be accurate with who is bred to who.

Ink Color: You’ll generally find that there are black and green ink options. I use the standard black ink on my rabbits. The green is good for goats, particularly if they are a black or dark color. The green tends to stand out better.

Goat Tattoos

Goats get a tattoo in their left and right ear, except LaManchas who don’t have big enough ears, so they are tattooed on their tail webbing.

Left Ear: The left ear tattoo is animal specific and is a letter that designates what year your goat was born. The designated letter can be found on your goat associations website. In addition to the letter you’ll provide a number that designates number of kids born on the farm. For Example: For ADGA, the letter for 2020 is “M” and if I’m registering the 3rd kid born on the property for that year, that kids left ear number will be M3.

Right Ear: The right ear is your registered herd tattoo. You pre-approve a tattoo of your choice of up to 4 letter/numbers with your goat club. This tattoo is unique to your farm to identify kids produced on your property. So for us, “Falcone Family Farm”, our tattoo is FAL1.

Rabbit Tattoos

Rabbit tattoos are a little different. You come up with a unique tattoo to identify each rabbit in the left ear. Everybody has their own unique way of doing it and you can use up to 5 numbers/letters. For Example: I use the first initial of my doe, first initial of my buck, a letter designating what litter it is for that doe (first litter “A”, second litter “B”. . .), and lastly a number stating which baby it is in the litter. So if my doe “Ezra” and buck “Califer” are having their fourth litter together and I’m tattooing the 5th baby in the litter, the tattoo would be ECD5. It can get complicated with the clamp if you need the same letter twice. You either skip over the duplicate letter, or get another set of numbers/letter, or what I do is two separate clamping’s. The right ear only gets tattooed if you decide to register the rabbit which doesn’t often happen unless you have a grand champion.

Tattoo Pen vs Clamp

A tattoo pen is just like it sounds where you have a little motorized tattoo pen to hand write your tattoo on your rabbit. The clamp is also just like it sounds. It’s a clamp that you load your chosen letter into and clamp the ear before rubbing in the ink.

Which Is Better?

Personally, after trying both methods, I prefer the clamp. Initially I thought the clamp looked too aggressive, so I started out with the pen and some numbing cream. But even with the numbing cream the rabbits still weren’t too thrilled about holding still for the process while I draw their numbers on. I decided to try the clamp and was much more pleased with the results. It’s a quick squeeze before rubbing in the ink and I’ve had better luck with the tattoo staying and not fading in the ear.

Step By Step

1. Restrain the animal. Goats can be on a milk stand or held by a friend. Rabbits are often wrapped snugly in a towel with only the ear exposed.
2. If using the clamp. Load your letter/numbers into it and do a test clamp on a piece of paper to make sure you have the proper digits and that they are in the proper order.
3. Wipe ear clean with rubbing alcohol to sterilize it. Also make sure your tattoo pen and letters are clean and sterile. If you have numbing cream, apply it now and allow it to sit for about 5-10 minutes before wiping it off and proceeding.
4.  Clamp with a firm squeeze or write your tattoo in the ear. Try to get it right down the center of the ear as to avoid any major blood vessels. After clamping, you then rub a generous amount of ink into the ear to get into the grooves. DO NOT wipe clean! Allow ink to stay there and flake off on its own to insure a clearer tattoo.
5. All Done! Give the goat a treat or rabbit a kiss and put them back in their pens.

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