I'll see if I can get some pictures.
What I do is I buy magnet strips that have adhesive on the back and stick them to the cage. Then get another magnet (of the opposite polarity) and put my label on it. So the magnets stick together.
I use FileMaker Pro for my custom database... the version of FileMaker Pro that I am using doesn't have native support for QR codes (but I'm fairly certain that the newest version does) so I actually wrote an app for my iPhone to access the database off my server and assign a QR code to each animal. If there is enough interest I can look into getting the app onto the app store.
I'm sure that there are other ways to incorporate QR codes. I already had the FileMaker Pro database set up before I started using QR codes so I just went with it.