The leg band is the one you read without catching the bird. It is the most-used band we make, and the one most breeders buy first — which is exactly why it is worth ordering deliberately instead of guessing at checkout.
There are a few decisions to make in a leg band order. None of them are hard, but getting them wrong means potentially living with a hundred bands you do not like.
That is a different job from a wing band, and it is worth being clear about the difference before you order. More on that at the end.
A leg band is your at-a-glance identity. Your farm name, number or brand on the leg, readable while the bird is on the ground. Its job is not only to individually identify a particular bird, but also provides area to claim ownership of that individual in a lasting way. Leg bands tell WHO they are & WHERE they’re from.
Every band is engraved on our own lasers rather than ink-stamped, and the set is cut after your order comes in — your text, your color, your numbers.
The most common mistake is asking for too much on one band. A farm name and a number, engraved cleanly, beats a crowded band every time.
Leg bands come in nine colors: brass, blue, green, red, black, yellow, pink, purple, and orange.
Use color to sort, not to identify. Color provides a quick way to ID any particular family, hatch year, etc. without having to handle the fowl; the embossed number is what gives identity to each individual for record keeping.
Sets run from 50 to 1,000, and shipping is free on every one of them.
Order for the season ahead rather than the hatch in front of you. Bands are engraved in one consecutive run, so a single larger set keeps your numbering continuous where two small orders could leave you managing a gap.
You choose the quantity, then you choose the number the run begins at. A 100-count set starting at 01 runs 01 through 100.
Starting fresh, choose 01. Adding to a yard you already band, start where your last set ended — so no two birds ever carry the same number, and next season’s set picks up cleanly from this one.
Bands go on with a tool made for them. The matching leg band pliers ship free alongside any band set, so there is no reason to fight a set on with something jerry-rigged from the toolbox.
A leg band is read easily but can’t go on until the leg is grown enough to hold the band reliably. A wing band is set into the wing web on young stock and carried for life, which makes it the permanent copy of a number.
Many breeders run both, with a unique number in each place: redundancy. Leg bands and wing bands both are considered ‘permanent’, but on the rare occasion something loses it’s band – having a reliable fallback can be incredibly valuable. Especially when so many families of fowl share and produce with similar physical traits.
If that is the direction you are going, compare the ZIP wing bands and the JIFFY wing bands.
Ready to order? Start with our gamefowl leg bands, or see the full range on the leg and wing bands page.
A breeder’s guide to marking and banding chicks — toe-punch charts, wing bands, and numbered leg bands — so you can track every bloodline from hatch to full-grown fowl.
Two wing band styles, one decision. What separates ZIP from JIFFY, what is identical between them, and which one fits the way you run your program.