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Branding, tattooing, photographing, and making a detailed written description are methods that have been used to make a positive identification of a particular horse. Microchipping, one of the most recent developments, has been welcomed by breed registries and owners because it was said to be permanent, nondisfiguring, and easily read throughout the animal’s lifetime.

Now that microchipping has been used for a number of years, most of the reviews are still positive, in spite of problems with the reliability of some scanners. In order to evaluate various types of scanners, a study was carried out at the Graf Lehndorff Institute for Equine Science, a joint research unit of the University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna, Austria,  and the Brandenburg State Stud at Neustadt (Dosse), Germany. Researchers used three different types of scanners to locate and read microchips in more than 400 horses. The scanners varied in diameter and field strength.

The scanner that performed best had a digital signal-processing function that filters interfering signals. This scanner detected and read all chips correctly when it was placed on the side of the neck where the chip was implanted. When it was used on the other side of the horses’ necks, it located the chips in almost 90% of the horses. The other two scanners produced correct reads about 90% of the time when scanning the side where the chip had been implanted, but on the other side, the success rate was only about 25%. Thus, a microchipped horse might not be identified 10% of the time unless a top-of-the-line scanner is used.

Even with this less than perfect record of performance, the researchers said that microchipping was a far more successful way to identify horses than branding. In earlier research at the university, studies had shown that a large number of brands faded and became unreadable over time. Horse owners object to branding because it is unsightly and painful, causing tissue damage to the horses.

To compare the physical effect of microchipping, the researchers examined the site of chip implantation in 16 horses of nine different breeds and of various ages that had been submitted to the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hannover, Germany, for postmortem examinations. They found no ill effects and concluded that this method of identification causes far less injury to the animals than branding.

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