[Rosemary]

As the title says - when do you tag your lambs?

We register our ewe lambs and our tup lambs go for meat. The tup lambs get a single EID tag when they are loaded on the trailer for the final journey - that's easy.

My previous practice has been to order tags after lambing is complete - the RFBS has a different letter for every year, which goes on the management tag, so I don't want to order an excess because I can't use them the following year. So tagging at birth is out - plus those tags in little ears  ?

Last year, we had the ewes and lambs in for something - can't remember what. We had all the lambs in a pen together and we let each ewe out one by one; she went to the lamb pen, her lambs went to her and we nabbed them and tagged any ewe lambs. Worked fine but I wonder if there's a better way. And I wouldn't like to do it that way with a big number of sheep - fine with 15 ewes.

[Ladygrey]

I do it at around 24 hours old when they are rung and weighed,
most tags are designed to be light enough in weight for small ears and most tag companies recommend tagging young, I find they heal much better and are a better fit when older if I do them young

But yes I see your problem with the ryeland letters for the years 

[Foobar]

I would campaign for your breed society to stop having such complicated rules for tagging .  Every breeding sheep is already uniquely identified by its defra tag number so why they see the need for another number or letter is beyond me!

[Fleecewife]

There are two kinds (that I know of) of tiny tags suitable for temporary birth tags/ management tags.  These go in at birth (room for up to three numbers of your choice), and stay until the lambs are 4 months old, by which time we've decided which females we want to register.  Males are tagged then too, but we wait until they are 16 months before deciding whether to register any, but we don't have to make the tags year dependent.

The turkey wing tags we use as birth tags come from Roxanne of Selkirk. They are tiny metal 'padlock' type things, which are popped in by hand, and they don't leave a hole.  Occasionally one comes out, but you can work out who's who easily enough by your method of elimination Rosemary when they're young.

There is another tiny plastic tag, not big enough for all the info the permanent tags require. These fit like many standard tags, but the pin is thin so they don't leave much of a hole.  If there is a hole, then the new tag goes into that, without pain, bleeding etc.  Someone else may know who supplies these.

[moony]

We do ours as late on as possible. Tups when they go and gimmers when we sort them in the Autumn for keeping or sale.

[ZaktheLad]

I do mine at second vaccinations. Works very well for me.

[Bionic]

We did ours at mums shearing time. Mainly because the shearer did it for us 

[Rosemary]

We do ours as late on as possible. Tups when they go and gimmers when we sort them in the Autumn for keeping or sale.

How do you know who the mothers are for registering?

[Marches Farmer]

24 hours before our ewes and lambs are transferred to the nursery shed the ewes are wormed and marked on their side with the identity of their lambs - ewe lambs are lettered, ram lambs numbered, so J8, KL, M9 ... The lambs get marked on both sides - makes it easier to see who's who if they lose Mama.   I also note the ewe number and lamb i.d. in a notebook.  The lambs' i.d. is remarked after their second Ovivac P Plus jab and lasts through to tagging. This will be when they go to sale as stores, to the abattoir or before the end of November if being registered for breeding.  I've seen too much damage to lamb's ears to do them any earlier than necessary - I still have one ewe with a hole the size of a golf ball in the middle of her ear that reminds me of what can happen.

[Tim W]

I would campaign for your breed society to stop having such complicated rules for tagging .  Every breeding sheep is already uniquely identified by its defra tag number so why they see the need for another number or letter is beyond me!

tried this with the Wilts Horn Society----you would have thought I had suggested spraying the Vatican with a slurry tanker of minced cats liver!

It's way too simple and logical a procedure for breed societies to adopt ---they are often more interested in discussing the colour and cut of blazers to be worn whilst showing than anything remotely practical to do with sheep ---(sorry---rant over , for now)

[mowhaugh]

Ours are done before they come out of their pen either to the field or nursery, so between 12 and 24 hours old.  I understand the problem with the letters etc - the Kerry Hills have to have a year number on their tags, but as we have 20 Kerrys to lamb compared to 1200 other ewes, we just put the extras in other lambs and figure it doesn't matter if they have an extra number.  We order tags according to our scan, pure breeds are double tagged in a particular colour each year so we can age sheep instantly by their tags, the cross ewes' lambs are all single tagged as they will all go to slaughter, the only bit that is a guessing game is the draft age cheviot ewes who are tupped with the berrichon - females are double tagged to keep and males single tagged to kill, so we have to err on the side of caution and order plenty.  This does mean we spend more on tags, in that we always have extras and a significant number of pure cheviot ram lambs are double tagged who don't make the grade and are slaughtered, but we way more than save this money back in time by tagging them in the shed.

[Rosemary]

We order tags according to our scan, pure breeds are double tagged in a particular colour each year

Hmm, what happens with tags that don't get used? We scanned 33 lambs; if I order tags now, I might order 17 slaughter tags and 16 pairs for ewe lambs. Last year, we had 14 ewes and seven tup lambs.

Let's say only 30 of the 33 are born alive, what do I do with the three tags I don't need? I can't use them next year but if I discard them, then is some sheep inspector not going to look for those three sheep?

Maybe I'm making too much of this 

[Ladygrey]

I just order double eid tags for everything, makes it easier and as they are all tagged and recorded I want double tags anyway, I order for average lambing % and then a little extra, any not used this year will just get used next year

The charmoise society has a prefix, of which mine is JB, so this year I just ordered all of the tags for every lamb with the letters JB on the tag, it didnt cost anything extra and it doesnt matter if fat lambs have JB written on the tag, no ones going to use it or wonder what its for

[Womble]

Let's say only 30 of the 33 are born alive, what do I do with the three tags I don't need? I can't use them next year but if I discard them, then is some sheep inspector not going to look for those three sheep?

It is a problem, isn't it?  The best solution I've thought of so far is to use up the spare EID tags in place of next year's slaughter tags. OK, so it means this year's tup lambs going to slaughter with last year's Ryeland numbers on them, but is that such a problem?

I can't see any inspector going looking for the three missing sheep, as long as you have the spare tags filed away somewhere unused?

One issue I have is that I settled on using Shearwell SET tags following great writeups on here, but now we have pedigree Zwartbles, they each need to be marked with the year letter and ZSA number as well as the DEFRA number. Unfortunately there isn't a way to fit all that info on the SET tag, so I'm going to have to order a different type of tag and gun for the Z's, which is somewhat annoying!

[SallyintNorth]

Womble, when you order your Shearwell tags, you can specify one or two lines of other info too, up to 5 characters per line, and you can specify incrementing or not.