I’m looking at adopting a Through bred, as far as I know he is not registered, however he has a three Character tattoo on his lip. The tattoo reads J 1 J. I can’t find anything in relation to it. I know tattoos are supposed to be 4 to 5 characters long but I was wondering what this could mean. Any help would be awesome!
The tattoos that TBs get are their year of birth (as a letter) plus registration number. Standardbreds, racing QHs, and Appaloosa get lip tats sometimes but AFAIK none are only 3 digits/letters. Are you sure there are only 3? Are they made up of dots the way the TB ones are (assuming you can tell)? Sometimes using a blacklight can help to make them clearer. It might be worth filling out the form for the Jockey Club and taking pictures to see if they can help.
There are not two letters in a TB tattoo. As Highflyer suggested, try and blacklight, it may be the last numbers are faded and the J is perhaps a 1 or faded 2.
Either the tattoo is very faded, you are seeing lip mottling that is not a tattoo at all, or (possible but not super likely) someone had a personal tattoo done for ID purposes that is not connected to a registry. Some very, very, very old TB may have a 5 character tattoo, but there would still be only one letter. How old is this horse approximately.
