[Jacob-list] tags

[Neal and Louise Grose]

We lamb on pasture. When ever possible, I go out and tackle the lambs the same day they are born and tag them then; because , otherwise, they cannot be caught. We use the 1 inch button tags. While their heads may hang sideways for a few days, they do not walk in circles, and I have had little problem with them. There seems to be more tendency for tags to cause infection when animals are tagged as adults.

We have to bite the bullet when tagging. The recent BSE flap means that we ARE going to a "Birth to table" monitoring of ALL livestock. I recently saw something on retinal identification in cows. (OK, you hold the cow still...) The implanting of microchips such as they use for pet identification is probably a better bet.

Neal Grose
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Betty Berlenbach 
  To: jacob-list at jacobsheep.com 
  Sent: Saturday, January 03, 2004 7:38 AM
  Subject: [Jacob-list] tags


  I tag the sheep when they are born, two days old, while still in lambing jugs, as part of my daily visit with them. (I find that if I spend time playing with each new lamb for the first three days, making them look at me, holding them, right next to mama, so she doesn't have a fit, they friendly up a bit faster, and therefore are a lot easier to sell.  Before they leave the lambing pens, they have their scrapie tags on.  They tend not to infect at that point...mother's immunities?  I don't know.  They tend to get infected when tagged older around here, like when a tag falls out and I have to retag or something like that.  
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