Reptile & Amphibian Forums

Is anyone using barcode technology for keeping snake data records? And if so, is it working well for you, or not worth the trouble. What are you using?
tom harbin

I can't see it being all that beneficial...unless people tattoo their snakes with barcodes.
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PHLdyPayne

Lots of possibilities for identification, like a barcode on each cage. Then one could use a laminated sheet like they use at grocery store, Lowes, etc with certain tasks associated with a unique barcode. Just think of how much info one could keep track of with this quick tool. some of the barcode readers can hold upto 8 KB of info before it needs to dump into a data base. I've got a small collection of snakes, about 125 or so, and I can't imagine some of the larger operations keeping up with all the info that is nice to have. Maybe this is in our future. I think this could be done for well under a couple hundred dollars. Does this sound geeky or what? tom harbin

Sounds like a great idea, you could have the scanner hooked right to your computer with a long cord, like we do at work, or maybe they even make wireless now?. On the laminated sheet you could have scans for shed, cleaned cage, changed water, ate and exactly what it ate ei size mouse or rat ect. pooped, added male, lock-up witnessed, ovulation, size of follicles, weigh, birth, ect, ect. Would be a great way to keep records and collect data, all you would have to do is enter the date before scanning for that day.
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Jeff Benfer
1.0 cinnamon pastel Python regius
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2.3 Terrapene carolina carolina
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0.1 butter p.h. stripe Pantherophis guttatus
0.1 carmel stripe p.h. amel Pantherophis guttatus
0.1 amelanistic p.h. carmel,stripe Pantherophis guttatus

They have barcode and scanning system that goes with their husbandry program. Keeps track of pretty much anything you could possibly want it to, including all associated costs (such as food, bedding, etc) and income generated from the collection. The company selling it charges a great deal more than just a few hundred bucks, though.

Not sure if I can say what company does it, so I'll leave it at that. It's not hard to find.

I wrote my own application to track feeding using a cheap USB barcode reader.

I scan the barcode for a block of racks to tell the app that
I'm putting rats in with all the snakes in that block.

If a snake doesn't eat, I scan the barcode on the bin for that
snake, and it's logged as refused.

Working with 100 snakes, this saves me a lot of time on record-keeping.

Good idea to use one bar code for an entire rack

I don't have enough snake right now to see the use of it, other than fun lol.

But if I can get my hand on a small and cheap rfid handheld, I might go that way .

but I am going to invest in a few snake this summer before that
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love this world, don't hate it.

There is a company in europe working on a software like that. I think they said its gonna be available in the middle of the year. Its gonna be arround 150 USD plus the scanner.

Degei has a Pro breeder series that has barcode scanners etc.

Snakekeeper has been using a barcode system for a few years now with their collection. Each individual snake has a id and a barcode. All they do is scan the barcode with whatever the snake has just done ie. shed, ate ovulated etc. Dan said it is fantastic ans saves a bunch of time for them.

Also there system automatically downloads it to there computer and organizes it as well. Have no idea how much it costs.