Individual identification in pigs using microchips
Individual identification of pigs could be used in commercial herds for production monitoring, disease monitoring and breeding evaluation. This study investigates the possibility of using microchips designed for dogs and cats to identify individual pigs from birth, through rearing to carcass at the slaughter plant. Two different sizes of microchips, and two different ages of the pigs at injection were tested. Castrates and gilts from ten litters were evenly distributed between chip sizes and injection ages. All pigs were identity marked with both electronic ear tags and injected with microchips. The readability and the presence of wounds for the different methods of identification were recorded through rearing and post slaughter. The results showed that the microchip is not a significantly better method than electronic ear tag for individual identification of pigs regarding readability (due to lost microchips). Moreover, the difference in presence of wounds between electronic ear tags and microchips were not significant. The results showed that a significantly higher proportion of the large microchips are lost during rearing than the small microchips and that a significantly higher proportion of microchips among the early injected (1-2 weeks of age) were lost than among the late injected (9-10 weeks of age). The conclusion of this study is that the use of microchip as well as electronic ear tags as reliable methods (according to the recommendation of >98 % readability by ICAR) for individual identification is not possible without further research at this moment.