[Jacob-list] Re:Wethering Lambs

[MarmontJacobs at aol.com]

Hi all,
       I'm amazed that you are allowed to use an elastrator at 2 months - in 
the UK, it is illegal after 7 days of age, although I personally think a 
couple of weeks is a better deal all round - sometimes they just haven't 
dropped enough and escape the indignity. We must burdizzo after that or call 
the vet. After a couple of years of only "doing" mismarked lambs, I have 
returned to doing most of my male lambs: the reason being that they seem to 
put so much energy into their horns that it is hard to finish them off grass 
by the autumn (January born) and there are far too many average rams around. 
This year I've kept back the 7 most promising all round.
    What do you do about tails? Here, the Jacob is classed as a hill breed, 
so retains 2/3 of it's tail - some don't tail at all, but we have bad fly 
trouble here in East Anglia. In the UK it is illegal to short dock, but I 
recently read an article in our National Sheep Association magazine on 
showing sheep in the US - the author stated that all the sheep he saw were 
tail-less, and that the last vertebra is sometimes surgically removed. Is 
this all true?
Trisha M-S