[farmvet]

Timing of tagging also depends on how you weight the odds between joint ill/septacaemia orf and flystrike...

[Womble]

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.

Indeed Rosemary, but once the statutory info is on there, there's only the wee end bit of the tag available for the extra information, so the font is very small indeed.

I would also have to order a minimum of ten pairs unless done as replica tags, so I either have to pay twice or like you, have lots of un-used ones since next year's letter will be different.

[mowhaugh]

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 

I just keep them in a box marked 'sheep tags' in the medicines lock up, and use them as spares so any sheep which loses a tag in future can have the right colour, and record it in the flock record.  In reality, they sit in the box mainly, and mount up year on year!  Any left over slaughter tags, we just deduct from how many we need to order and use the next year.  We just accept that we waste a wee bit of money on extra tags (usually maybe end up with 30 odd spare, plus there will be some in lambs which have died after tagging where we have I suppose 'wasted' the tag compared to if we did them later), we do make an adjustment for still births when ordering, but the system works for us because we think doing it this way saves us time (=money) elsewhere, especially with the issue as you say of knowing parentage, which is important to us for at least 3/4 of our sheep, which is a big number.  In your situation, not sure what I would do - ideally if they are not being done at birth, I'd probably wait until the lambs go to slaughter, or you decide to retain/sell them, hopefully past the point of there being flies about, but realise that may not work with having to register pure breds - not sure what the deadline is for Ryelands.

[SallyintNorth]

Timing of tagging also depends on how you weight the odds between joint ill/septacaemia orf and flystrike...

and frost-damage too, if tagging later in the year. 

[Jukes Mum]

Timing of tagging also depends on how you weight the odds between joint ill/septacaemia orf and flystrike...

has tagging been implicated in these? 
I remember some time ago there was discussion about leg tags (or did I dream this  ). Are these allowed?

[Foobar]

Timing of tagging also depends on how you weight the odds between joint ill/septacaemia orf and flystrike...

has tagging been implicated in these? 

Fly-strike maybe, but if you disinfect your tags & tagger like you are supposed to you shouldn't get any other problems.  The advantage of tagging them when they are very young is that you avoid the fly strike season, and the ear is growing faster during that period so heals up quicker (IMHO).

[mowhaugh]

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!

You can get all that on a Shearwell SET tag, they will put two small lines of data, for your ZSA number and letter on the wee round bit. 

[mowhaugh]

Sorry repeated what was said above, hadn't scrolled down properly.  it isn't that small on the round bit, still perfectly legible, and although it is a few years since I had Zs, I checked with the society at the time if that was oK, and they were happy with it then.

[SallyintNorth]

We have one line of management info on our Shearwell tags and it is completely legible when close up, even to those of us who need reading glasses for other close-up work (eg, dosing instructions!)

[Garmoran]

I used to do mine in late August/early September, a couple of weeks before the sale. Always dreaded putting in the yellow tag, because of how often they would not penetrate the ear, but bend sideways, leading to unnecessarily unhappy sheep and much bad language from Garmoran.

Last year I put them in at shearing time: it was easier to identify lambs because they were still sticking close to the ewes, the tags went in with very few problems and there were no infected ears, something I had not managed to achieve before despite much use of Dettol and antiseptic cream.

I wouldn't like to tag them earlier though, due to the high risk of tags getting torn out when caught in fences. Their sprayed-on number is usually still legible at shearing time.

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?

If the tags aren't listed as used in your Flock Record Book then I can't see why an inspector should look for them. Like Mowhaugh, I find I need a spare from time to time and I try to use a replacement tag from the same batch as the original.

[VSS]

Before we turn out ewes with their lambs we spray a number on the ewe and a matching one on the lambs and note it down in the lambing notebook so we know which ewe (and lamb) has which spray number.
Then when we tag the lambs at six weeks old, the paint numbers are still readable, so we can cross reference the spray number to the new ear tag.

Works a treat.

[Tim W]

I tag at or within 24 hrs of birth with Shearwell SET tags.

retention is excellent & I can't remember getting infection problems

If you do the job properly and disinfect the applicators/tags now and then its a doddle