Jockey Club offering free IDs of tattoos
 

http://www.brisnet.com/cgi-bin/edito...e.cgi?id=14681
Racehorse tattoos will now be searchable, even partials. So if you come across a horse in a kill pen or something, I would guess that means you could do a search fairly quickly and see who it is or narrow it down. Can you get close enough to check that kind of thing at those types of auctions?

This isgood news for rescues and for people with TB's in the show world who were sold w/out papers.
It could have a side benefit for small breeders in that if people know "who" their thoroughbred is (his breeding) it can be tracked and certain lesser stallions can emerge as important showhorse stallions.

the tricky part is when the letter can't be read...I remember trying to find out info on a horse that had pretty clear numbers but an illegible letter and the people at JC wouldn't help because they re-use the numbers every year. And the owner was even willing to pay...they never offered to research against markings etc...

Couldn't you get a list of the horses with that number and figure out which ones match the approximate age/color/gender? If there were still a problem and you really needed to know, maybe one of the people who were potential prior owners could be shown a picture to ID. There's always a DNA match with the possible parents that you've narrowed it to. Horses are only so old, you could probably get pretty close to guessing within 5 choices right?