Bird band with phone number?

[TexasWade]

Is it possible to get anything besides breeder info on a band? Seems like having a phone number would be a natural thing, like a dog tag but I've never heard of it. My google search didn't turn up anything useful.

 

[SailBoat]

There is a falling number of Breeders and therefore the number of bands orders placed are way down. The idea of a phone number is a good one and has more than likely not been considered since the market has always been the Breeder. The process of making bands doesn't lend itself to making a single band. So, the cost to do so would likely be high. I will nose around a little and see what a couple of my friends that buy bands have to say.

 

[OOwl]

Our phone numbers change in the average life of a bird, so that wouldn't really be "permanent" ID. The best permanent ID I've found, thus far, is a microchip. My larger birds are chipped for my peace of mind, even if they already have a breeder's closed band. Bands can be removed; microchips not so easily.

You can, however, order a small order of bands with whatever information you want on them, but the lowest amount is still around 25 bands and you'd have to know which bird you'd want to put one on when the baby was closed banded, at around 10 days of age or so for a small bird. I'm also not sure an entire phone number with area code with fit on it for a small bird such as a cockatiel, and IF they were able to get it on there, it might be almost impossible to read.

Bands are frustrating things. I had a foster bird once with one and I had the hardest time tracking down the breeder, and when I eventually did, she couldn't even really tell me much about the bird, having not kept very good records. What would be better is a single registry of bands, but I don't know how that could be done because it would require all-breeder participation. I'm just hoping technology advances to the point of being able to permanently ID our smaller pet birds. Anything can happen in life, including natural disasters, fires, thefts, and accidents, that separate us from our pets, and I would sleep better if I knew I could be more easily reunited with my pets, ALL my pets, large and small.

 

[TexasWade]

I wasn't thinking so much about theft, more like a tag on a dog's collar type thing where any honest person could see the number and call. And I didn't realize the bands were such a difficult or specialized thing to put on. Could it be done with some sort of a hospital band type arrangement or would the bird just chew off any kind of plastic thing?

 

[SailBoat]

Currently, there are at two styles of bands: Plastic and metal rings. The plastic have the information hot stamped and the metal uses pressure stamping.

In speaking with a manufacturer, they had no interest due to the cost of a single band and its sizeable overhead. The process is very labor intense, their profit is obtained in the volume they run after set-up. This holds turn looking at their pricing. According the the owner, if he made single band runs, he would only make 15 - 20 bands per day.

 

[TexasWade]

15-20 bands per day? Wow, they must not be set up well at all. I work in a machine shop and would expect I could turn out at least 1000 blank bands a day. Send them all out for anodizing and stock them. Laser etch as needed would take about as long as printing out a piece of paper if you have the setup for it. I don't have a laser engraver but I could order some jeweler's number punches and stamp a band by hand in maybe 5 minutes...

Next question, can you put a closed band on an adult bird? I kind of assumed they put on as small a band as they can when they're babies then the birds grow into it preventing any possibility of rebanding.

 

[Aquila]

15-20 bands per day? Wow, they must not be set up well at all. I work in a machine shop and would expect I could turn out at least 1000 blank bands a day. Send them all out for anodizing and stock them. Laser etch as needed would take about as long as printing out a piece of paper if you have the setup for it. I don't have a laser engraver but I could order some jeweler's number punches and stamp a band by hand in maybe 5 minutes...

Next question, can you put a closed band on an adult bird? I kind of assumed they put on as small a band as they can when they're babies then the birds grow into it preventing any possibility of rebanding.

The band will not fit over the foot, so no, you couldn't place a closed band on a bird over a few weeks old.

And I agree that the production for bands seems absurdly low, I've worked in pharmaceutical packaging and we make all kinds of small things. Not to mention now with 3D printing how easy it could be.

I thought about ordering cheap open bands for my birds, since you might have to replace them semi often depending on your birds. When my breeders finally produce, I thought about "double banding" meaning a band on each leg until they get dna'd, and then snip off left or right depending on gender, though I plan to keep meticulous records anyway!