Janet Forry, recently appointed registrar of the United States Trotting Association and TC Lane, director of Officials and Identification at USTA, met with Standardbred Canada’s Ted Smith, president & CEO, Pat Kennedy, manager of Member Services & assistant registrar and Heather Reid, manager of Sales, Stakes & Identification on December 11 and 12.
The meeting took place at SC’s office in Mississauga, with an agenda to enhance, streamline and automate the identification and registration processes of standardbreds across North America.
It was agreed that the permanent identification, via freeze branding and simultaneous collection of DNA samples, is clearly the correct process that ensures the integrity of the registry. The goal of the meeting was to develop primary technology that will make it efficient for ID technicians to identify the colour, sex and white marking descriptions from 18 coded versions of the head, lips, four legs and body. Technicians will use hand-held PDAs that will hold all the matings from North America.
By calling up the assigned number for each mating, technicians will identify the foal with a few entry strokes. Once loaded to the PDA, they will then be transmitted to the databases of the USTA and SC.
Heather Reid said that “this is the best meeting SC has had with the USTA in the last three years. I can clearly see how our joint efforts in identification will soon allow SC and USTA to implement online registration of foals by our respective members in North America.” It is SC’s and USTA’s desire to implement on-line registrations of foals in an electronic mode that matches the breeders choice of name selections, place of foaling and return of the mating certificates from stallion owners, with the ID technicians electronic report of colour, sex, white markings and DNA results from the laboratory.
In future, the registration process could only take minutes instead of weeks.
Meetings with the ID Technicians, DNA laboratories, USTA/SC IT Department, will continue over the next four months towards implementation in 2009.
For further information contact Heather Reid and Pat Kennedy at SC and Janet Forry and TC Lane at the USTA.
Will this cost us more? The
Will this cost us more? The ease with which it is done should result in savings for financially stressed breeders.
In the UK we have been
In the UK we have been microchiping our foals for years,it has worked very well and each horse can be quickly identified with a scanner