Id & Trace

The "Less Stress" concept

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Professional pig slapper tattoo range

for when identification is a priority

Need information?  Just phone 01634 364832

Id & Trace

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Professional standard slapper tattoo

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A little background to development

(Why ours work while others fail)

Whether wielding an axe, playing tennis or using a slapper tattoo, it all depends on hand to eye co-ordination.

You don’t look at the head of the racquet, you keep your eye on the ball, knowing you will hit it, even though you don’t look for the impact.

All this is possible because the raquet (or axe handle) is shaped to enable your hand to recognize how you are holding it. Your memory knows where the head of the racquet is dependant on how you are holding the handle, and the relationship of your hand to your body.

None of this works with a round circular handle. There is no point of reference for your hand to recognize. Therefore it is not possible to know the raquet or axe head's orientation without watching it.

Now, regarding slap marking, a circular handle is fine if you only have a few pigs to slap as you can take your time and be very careful. 

However, not only do you have to get the head exactly parallel to the pigs body to ensure equal penetration of the entire herd mark tattoo pins, you now have to do the other side before the pig has run passed you onto the lorry, followed by his mates.

Most stockmen ink the needles well, they get the slap number into the skin, and then days later the abattoir are complaining about illegible slap marks.

It would appear that many of these marks are very good at one end of the slap but fade away to nothing by the other end of the mark as there is no way of ensuring that the head of the slapper was parralel to the animals body at the point of contact.

Another complication would appear to come when the head is way out of line with the handle. The best configuration seems to be when you are able to point down the handle to almost the point of contact.

So, while developing our Professional range of slapper tattoos we have put a lot of effort into the shape of the handle, the grip and its relationship with the tattoo head ensuring effective control and therefore ledgible slap marks.

Don’t take our word for it, just try this out.

Stand at arms reach from a wooden fence rail so that you can place your slapper head flat on the rail.  Stay exactly where you are. Give the slapper tattoo to someone else. Now close your eyes. Take back the slapper and try to lay the head parallel to the rail again.

The other determining factor is controllability and is how easily the tattoo needles penetrate the skin.

In the good old days of the pig fair we would have producers come and order a new slap marker, and when you asked them what code they used, it was unbelievable the amount of times they would roll up their trouser leg to show a beautiful tattoo mark, obtained when the pig had moved but they were unable to stop the swing of the slapper tattoo. Luckily there aren’t many sledge hammer slapper tattoos still in use.

Our “less stress” characters use narrow pointed parallel section pins at an optimum density to ensure a good transmission of ink while keeping the herd mark condensed.

The Professional slapper range offers  6 and 7 characters heads with character sizes of  10, 15  mm height. They will all take slide in herd mark plates or individual characters. Character size use is dependant on age and weight of animals being marked.

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