It doesn't get old for me, when we have guests and I discuss the names for our "herd".  

"Wait, you name your animals?"

"Yes."

"Even the ones you will harvest?"

"Yes."

Enter the naming standard.  Naming any animal that will be with us for a while like cows and pigs makes distinguishing them easier. "Jim", "John" and "George" is easier than "the one with the brown spot", "the one with horns" or "the big one that plays in the hay". With few exceptions, our breeders have normal names like Tango, Cash, and Boots.  Animals bound for freezer camp have names like T-Bone, Chuck and Stew (all cows by the way).

The Idea being that food related names remind us of the animal's purpose.  The aforementioned exceptions are Pickle, Gerkin and Jimmy Dean (all pigs by the way).  Oh, and Honeybun and Oreo, both rabbits.  The names were just too good to pass on.

It won't work for everyone, but this is how we hurtled the identification issue.