# ADGA membership name



## WannaBeFarmR (Jul 1, 2013)

Ok so I'm filling out ADGA stuff it keeps asking for my membership name on stuff, I have been putting my actual name is that right or is membership name what your herd name is going to be? When my first goats are born here they won't be registered as (example) John Smith's Daisy will they? Because I wanted to use my hobby farm's name as my herd name. I wanted that to proceed my goats names not my own name. Did I mess up already?


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## michickenwrangler (Jul 1, 2013)

The herd name of a goat is whomever owned the doe at the time she was bred to the buck. Real life example. I bought a pregnant doe years back. We had to register the offspring under the previous owner's herd name rather than mine.

You can apply for a herd name. I think it's like $20


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## ragdollcatlady (Jul 1, 2013)

Register your hobby farm herd name with ADGA first, then that is what will go on all the registrations in front of your kids names.

Example, my farm name is Just A Little Patch Of Weeds, my registered herd name with both ADGA and AGS, is Patch of Weeds, so my babies names are Patch of Weeds Whoa Nellie, Patch of Weeds CanterburyBelle, etc.... 

I personally found ADGA very difficult to work with. If I were you I would straighten the name/herd name out right away if you can.


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## OneFineAcre (Jul 1, 2013)

ragdollcatlady said:
			
		

> Register your hobby farm herd name with ADGA first, then that is what will go on all the registrations in front of your kids names.
> 
> Example, my farm name is Just A Little Patch Of Weeds, my registered herd name with both ADGA and AGS, is Patch of Weeds, so my babies names are Patch of Weeds Whoa Nellie, Patch of Weeds CanterburyBelle, etc....
> 
> I personally found ADGA very difficult to work with. If I were you I would straighten the name/herd name out right away if you can.


I'm surprised to hear that.  We have always found them quite helpful and easy to work with.


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## WannaBeFarmR (Jul 1, 2013)

What's confusing me is the PIN application: it asks for membership name then there's a place for 4 separate people's names and signature and then ADGA ID and date and a signature at the bottom. I don't know if the membership name is the member's name individual like John Smith. If you were a business (like a big farm) that also had goats the membership name would be McDonald's Farm since they would have their own billing account. So later on can McDonalds farm apply for a herd name like Tin Can Nubians.  So a goat bred and born on their farm might be Tin Can Nubians Daisy. Not McDonald's Daisy or John Smith's Daisy. IS your Membership name you herd name or do you pick that later or apply for that later? I feel like I'm explaining this really badly. 

And I'm not real happy with dealing with them so far either, I paid for my membership stuff at the beginning of the month and have yet to get anything in the mail. I got an invoice/shipping notification on the 20th, weeks later.  And I have called twice asking if they know when I'd get it or if they could track where it is. They couldn't and told me it was a big envelope with books that needed to be printed and all sent out at the same time so it would take awhile. The AKC is so much more efficient and straight forward. I'm trying to do the pin stuff so I can use the member features on the ADGA site I was told to do this and that my Customer ID was my ADGA number.


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## WhiteMountainsRanch (Jul 2, 2013)

*Your membership name is your personal name as far as I know a goat has to be in a persons name, not a business. You will be assigned a membership number. Once you have that you need to fax in (I believe) a request for a pin number and they verify it with your signature that I believe you mail in. I didn't find it difficult at all, just call them and ask them. Once you have all that done your good to go and you can go ahead and apply for your Herd Name which will be what is in front of the goats names. When you pick your tattoo make it something close to your herd name. Example mine is White Mountains and my tattoo is WMR1.

Hope this helps!*


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## ragdollcatlady (Jul 2, 2013)

The books can take a few weeks. I applied for my herd name at the same time as applying for membership and I was sent a paper that stated my tattoo and the herd name as being reserved for myself and DD. Both our names are on the actual goat registration for each animal, as well as the prefix of Patch of Weeds before all kids born here. 

In applying for membership under your name, you will be assigned a tattoo if you did not request a specific one at the time you applied for membership. I ended up calling and requesting a specific tattoo as I already had it and had a membership under AGS with that specific tattoo. But the tattoo that I requested was taken so I called AGS and I now have POW1 as my tattoo for both registries .......hopefully that will prevent problems down the road for us and new owners in registering with whichever registry we prefer. My goats are able to be registered in both without tattoo issues anyway.


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## WannaBeFarmR (Jul 2, 2013)

Okay I think I get it. They told me I already have a tattoo which was one of the letter combos I asked for on the membership form I filled out. I think the order stuff is being done is maybe getting me a little confused confused.  It would sure be wonderful if they had online forms to fill out and submit and not have to mail this or mail that. In this day and age its pretty inefficient to not be able to do simple things like form submissions on your website, It would really speed things up and make less work for them in the long run. There would be a lot more registered goats out there too I'd bet. And I really like when I'm filling something out and I'm unsure what their asking to be able to click that little i in the blue circle (info icon) and find out what it is that they want there, lol. It seems like every time I've called there I just get the busy signal it takes forever to get through, and sometimes I just don't have the time to keep trying. I won't hold it against them though since I seem to have a reverse Midas touch...hint everything I touch turns into the opposite of gold, I have the worst luck ever.


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## ragdollcatlady (Jul 2, 2013)

In my experience the people are friendly enough. They ADGA just has some goofy policies I guess. It seems like they try and make things harder than they need to. AGS seems to use much more common sense about things. Mostly I was having issues with my minor children and goat registrations. 

As far as the online stuff, I don't have my pin set up yet, but I believe regular stuff like yearly registrations can be completed online. I think registrations from animals not already registered to you need to have the hard copy mailed in. I think animals that are already registered to you can have progeny registered online. At least that is my understanding.


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## meme (Jul 2, 2013)

OneFineAcre said:
			
		

> ragdollcatlady said:
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We have been having serious issues getting our kids registered. We sent off the applications over 2 months ago. The owner of the buck sent off the service memo at the same time with a note saying to put it in my file. They don't like to take them seperately, apparently. Our 4-H leader rushed the papers on the doe we are keeping, so she had to fax a new app. with the service memo and walk them through everything on the phone. We called to ask if they could register the other doeling normally, and the lady said she would. 1 week later, we call to see if the papers are almost here, because the doeling's new owner needs them for the show. A different lady answered this time and said they needed us to fax and error report before they could send it off, even though the other person said they didn't. Now it is finally supposed to be on its way. Now they want us to re-do the application for our buckling (even though they have one for each kid already there) and fax it in with a copy of the service memo. We are going to Walmart to do that today. Sorry for the random rambling, but we have just been really fed up with their service!


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## WannaBeFarmR (Jul 2, 2013)

I get the opinion they are understaffed or overworked there. Its fine to not use a computer system if you can easily handle the work load. Sometimes its better since you can still do your job if the system crashes or is down or something. But when you're dealing with this much information from that many different people on a daily basis you need to have a better system to lighten the load and speed things up...or hire a crazy amount of people around kidding season to keep things moving. Maybe I'm wrong but it sure looks like that's whats going on. Either way they sure take forever to get things done especially in the digital age where the population is so used to nearly instantaneous results. I got annoyed this morning waiting for the computer to start up and they want me to wait over a month for my first paper work...lol.


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## ragdollcatlady (Jul 2, 2013)

One of the issues I had with them is regarding the owner name on the registration. I had registered Reese under the non member option when I got her because I wanted her registered but I didn't need a membership. I only had 4 goats and wasn't in need of any other services, just her registration. Now, I have more goats and a membership and they would not let me register her kids under my registration because the nonmember ID (different from the member ID) means she doesn't belong to me under the membership one?!?! I would have to include a breeding memo and all that (I own my bucks and they are already registered under my membership  ID with ADGA). They said that in order to register her kids, I had to transfer her to my membership ID first, before the breeding date. So I paid the transfer fee and switched it, but that is beyond ridiculous.

Why wouldn't they just use the same ID number for those folks that have yet to join them, or maybe didn't pay the membership fees and just charge more for the paperwork? 

Another issue I had was they told me I had to open a new account to add my minor children. On one hand OK fine, but then they said that to register any kids under the goats for that ID, I should transfer all my goats to that new account and that since I didn't pay the fees on my old account (I don't need more than one account so I was just going to leave the goats that were already registered under that account alone), that my tattoos for those kids were not valid and they could not be registered. I could have understood if they said that they would have to be registered with a nonmember fee since the moms were under a "closed" account, but that wasn't even it. I was told that that tattoo was no longer valid so then I had to find out if they meant that I couldn't use the tattoo because it was assigned to me under the old account or that it was totally cancelled......  

I finally asked to cancel the "new" account, my son didn't want to go to the fair anyways, so I didn't need the goats to have his name on them after all. Why waste my time and money transferring everybody to an account with his name added. 

If it was just that it takes time, fine. I understand busy. But this is ridiculous. It seems like they are trying to make things far more difficult than they have to be. IMHO anyways.


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## OneFineAcre (Jul 2, 2013)

Sylverfly said:
			
		

> Okay I think I get it. They told me I already have a tattoo which was one of the letter combos I asked for on the membership form I filled out. I think the order stuff is being done is maybe getting me a little confused confused.  It would sure be wonderful if they had online forms to fill out and submit and not have to mail this or mail that. In this day and age its pretty inefficient to not be able to do simple things like form submissions on your website, It would really speed things up and make less work for them in the long run. There would be a lot more registered goats out there too I'd bet. And I really like when I'm filling something out and I'm unsure what their asking to be able to click that little i in the blue circle (info icon) and find out what it is that they want there, lol. It seems like every time I've called there I just get the busy signal it takes forever to get through, and sometimes I just don't have the time to keep trying. I won't hold it against them though since I seem to have a reverse Midas touch...hint everything I touch turns into the opposite of gold, I have the worst luck ever.


Once you get your PIN you can do everything on the website, registration, service memos.


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## OneFineAcre (Jul 2, 2013)

meme said:
			
		

> OneFineAcre said:
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Again I'll say I'm sorry to hear you are not having a good experience with ADGA, we have always found them to be quite helpful and courteous.  

My wife was recently the supt of a 24 hour milk test.  You have to have the paper work with all of the animals, and milk weights to ADGA and get the labwork from an approved lab with butterfat and protein content.  They were very helpful.

They do get overwelmed in the spring with the volume of registrations, shows, and milk tests.

We do all of our registration and service memos online.

We bought a doe last year who was already bred.  We did the transfer online and got her new paperwork.  When she kidded we got the breeder to do the service memo online.  Easy as could be.


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