# Tracking Lineage of Farm Animals



## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

As we're getting into our 4th generation of rabbits, it's becoming increasingly obvious that we need a better system for keeping track of their ancestry. So far, we've been able to keep it all in our head. However, today the wife and I were talking about breeding the next batch of rabbits, and it took us a few minutes to get everything figured out again. The next batch or two will probably be more than we can keep track without a system. We were hoping we'd have found a better system by this point, but we haven't.

Ideally, what we're looking for is a free system similar to ancestry.com, except for animals, but I don't think that really exists. We could just write out the names and who begat who, but it's going to get biblical too quickly (particularly with rabbits) and it's not a nice visual system where I can "see" the bloodlines as a graphic.

So, what do you use to keep track of your animals' bloodlines?


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## jeff47041 (Jan 5, 2013)

Have you read about notching their ears? I've never done it, but I have heard that people do it. We used to notch our pigs ears to keep track of who was who.

We used to use a 3-notch system on each ear. So some girls had 1 on the left, while other had top & bottom on left (skip #2) and 1 on right ear. There are a lot of combinations doing it that way.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

Most farm animals are much easier to keep track of because there is typically only one breeding season per year. Then you can simply go with a year code and number, and have that for reference, most animals also have a much higher female:male ratio that makes record keeping simpler.

Anyways, even a tiny notebook will keep track of thousands of animals, especially with a number/letter system.

Tattooing is about the best way of record keeping for most animals, works on rabbits too. That is how most livestock purebred records must be kept.


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

Sorry, let me clarify a little bit. We're good with identifying specific animals (each are kept separate). What we're trying to find is a way to track each animal's lineage. I have 4 blood lines right now, and the goal is to track those lines moving forward. It's easy enough to write down new bunny names, their IDs, and who their parents are, but being able to look at a list and easily determine bloodlines will get increasingly complex as more generations come through. Our hope is to find a graphical solution so we can visually see the relationships between the bunnies, but we're certainly open to other methods.


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## cowboyhermit (Nov 10, 2012)

I think you were pretty clear, I just went off on a tangent anyways 

Anyways, what I was getting at was that with simple letter/number code it is possible to convey some basic information without detailed records.

For detailed records like you seem to be looking for, there are books available for cattle but not sure of how well they would work for rabbits, maybe pigs would be better suited. There is definitely software out there for all breeds, or just generic pedigree tracking. 

I don't have any personal recommendations for software, but searching for instance "rabbit record keeping software" will give you some options. Or pedigree or progeny record keeping.


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## Marcus (May 13, 2012)

You can download and try this program for free.
http://www.kintraks.com/downloads.htm
The full version is under $20 which is about $100 cheaper than similar programs.


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

http://misbach.org/free-pdf-charts.html

this i what I would use.


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