leg bands or wing clips?

[ki4got]

Does anyone use either of these for identifying birds in your flocks?

I was thinking about using some to ID birds by parentage, but would have to start at hatch because i'm planning on hatching multiple lines at the same time.

with wing clips, how easy is it to ID the birds on the ground without catching them? I like the idea of leg bands, all my caged birds are banded around 2 weeks old, but they're closed bands that never come off... can you do chickens like that too or??

if necessary I can use multiple bands/methods, but i'd like suggestions.

thanks
Karen

 

[laceynoelle]

I use bands all the time, but I havent used wingclips.
With bands there are different colors and numbers so you can track who's who. They come in different sizes, and you cant have them on the chicks until theyre nearly grown, because if the band is too small it will cut off circulation and a lot of bad things can happen. You can use chick sized bands and switch them out, or just keep them seperate and band them when theyre older.
Some of he bands get all fancy, they stay on forever and are metal, and you have the info engraved into the band of each particular bird, but I think thats a pretty expensive setup. Other bands are basic colored spirals w/o the numbers you can just use to track groups as a whole.

I like tracking each individual chicken, which is easy with a computer. For different hatches, you can have somthing like 1-20 Blue, 1-16 Yellow, 1-23 Red, and 1-28 Green, then say theyre from 2012 by adding a red spiral band. Thats an example of how next year would go for me, you would have to modify it to fit your needs but its a good start.

 

[ki4got]

Quote:
so say you have 3 pens of the same breed but want to be able to ID which pen a particular bird comes from... how would you mark them as chicks? especially if they all hatch about the same time? I've seen mention of toe punching but I have no idea how that would work...

and i like the idea of color for year and then numbered colored series on the other leg...