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Originally Posted by jencar98  Yes, tattoos are still used by breeders and they are usually placed on the skin of the tummy area near the back leg. I would prefer a tattoo over chipping because it's visible and you're not relying on someone to scan your dog. Also, there are tattoo registry services just like microchip registries.
Nancy, you mentioned the cost to breeders being $20 to chip a dog. I don't believe it's anywhere near that expensive, as they buy the chips in bulk. The dog auctions chipped all of the dogs there and believe me, I'm sure they didn't invest $20 per dog.....many dogs didn't even sell for $20. |
Yeah, I was using the higher range, but to commercial breeders any cost put out is less money in their pockets, I actually think the main reason is that the dogs will be able to be tracked back to them. With tattoos they use their own form of record keeping, and dogs can't be traced back to them. While there are some types of painless tattoos, from some of the things I've read, they aren't as good as regular tattoos in keeping the lettering over the years. Again, these can be easily altered. I guess I would be worried about the pain produced with regular tattooing.
If someone takes a new dog to the vet, without any type of records, a vet will check to see if it has a microchip, and many dogs have been returned to their true owner through this scenario. I'm not sure if the same thing would happen with a tattoo, and from one case I read, the owner who found a tattooed dog, had no luck with any of the registries, and had difficulty actually reading the tattoo. So it does offer some protection, but there are dangers associated with tattooing as well.