[Jacob-list] Re:Wethering Lambs

[Debbie Bennett]

We leave the best looking rams intact and wether the rest. I wether with 
an elastrator at approx 2 weeks of age. My son tried to wether a bottle 
lamb earlier and didn't get both testicles, we ended up putting that 
lamb in the freezer earlier than we wanted to because of ram behavior.
I just read new regulations for tail docking. Evidently the commercial 
breeders used to dock very short and some of them took off the tail 
entirely. Because of prolapse problems, they now have to leave "enough 
tail to be lifted with a pencil", whatever that means. I dock tails, but 
generally leave two to three inches.
Debbie Bennett
On Monday, February 25, 2002, at 12:29 PM, MarmontJacobs at aol.com wrote:

> 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
>
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