The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: bloomer on April 17, 2016, 04:55:54 pm
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I'm still a beginner at elastrating tup lambs but have managed 2 of the 3 that need doing so far just fine.
No. 3 is causing me problems, today is day 5 and I went to try and band him, he's a big strapping lamb. He has a big fluffy purse and tiny miniscule balls held so tight to his body I have no chance of teasing them into the purse for removal...
So after you all stop giggling and pick yourselves up off the floor do you have any suggestions...
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Wait a few days and try again
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As above, but also the more you fiddle around with them, the more opportunity he has to retract them. The ideal, which takes a while to achieve, is to pick him up and have the band on before he knows what's hit him. Otherwise, positioning is all.......
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I in the positioning is key camp and in teeny tiny ram lambs prefer to snare the little blighters with a bit of string so they can't go back up and then I can take my time to band them remembering to remove the string before letting them go.
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our borerays had tiny knackers.
the easiest way I found was to lie him on his back on your lap, and position the expanded band over his bawbag. get a second person to ensure the balls are in the sack before releasing. iv done this with farmers and vets and it has taken a good 10 mins to persuade the balls to stay put. natives had tiny springy knackers so don't do it too soon (obviously in the legal timeframe).
if you are a novice, remember not to catch their urine tube in the ring.
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Get some one else to Hold the lamb vertically front legs in the air and bottom on the ground then pop the balls forward with the fingers of the left hand with the elastor in place with right or vice versa depending what hand you use then catch check for two and release band
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Now I have a confession ... my lambs are Shetland, some with a bit of Icelandic in them too, we've had a huge preponderance (sp?) of rams this year - 11 out of the first 12 born! - and after chickening out last year I decided I would band them this year to make things less fraught in the Autumn and enable us to keep a few of them to send off as hoggets after Christmas ...
However as the OP says, their balls are tiny, more like petits pois than the peas we could feel on the Suffolks I was trained on. And they pop up and down, especially once you start feeling for them. I have tried to be quick, to catch the little blighters before they're retracted, but have a horrible feeling I've missed some of them. And yesterday I tried to do one little fellow and realised I'd not caught the balls - I did manage to get the band off again, but I really don't want to do that again! We let him go back to his mum and I'll try again in a few days when he's recovered from the trauma.
I hate this bit of shepherding, it seems so brutal. :(
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Push the jaws / proddy part of the elastrator against his skin and it'll make him drop them so you can get the band on. Also helps to have someone hold him up for you.
All mine grew horns last year, so I was determined to do it right this year, and after a ridiculous amount of ram lambs this year, I only got one wrong - he has 4 teats instead of 2 so I don't think I got it quite high enough.
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Cor :o As a bloke reading this thread my eyes are watering .
:relief: Thank god I've got the doors & windows locked .
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Well, I'm relieved to read this, as I am having exactly the same problem!
Three Shetland tup lambs so far - the first seemed to go well at 3 days old. The next two have, as so beautifully described by bloomer, empty purses. The second born is now 6 days, and I'm beginning to worry. Apart from anything else, the little sod is now very hard to catch ...... It's like wacky races out there!
I'll try the techniques advised ......
So grateful btw for all the great advice and info on this forum. It's so reassuring for newbies like me :thumbsup:
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Last year I had two whole ram lambs that were joined by a ewe lamb a month later. As the rams had not been banded I took them to my vet to be Burdizzo ‘d. Quick, painless and cheap @ £10.
Just an option if all else fails
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Make sure you carry a Swiss Army knife with scissors - we've found this is the easiest way to remove a band which has missed the vital bits.
Having bred Soay for a number of years, although we no longer have any, I think I'm familiar with the tiniest testes known to man :eyelashes:. They were never ready to be ringed within the 7 day window. To my mind it becomes a welfare issue if you accidentally catch a testis halfway across, perfectly possible with such tiny ones, or if one slips back part of the way, after application, if you don't remove the band. It must be agony for quite a while.
So the question is, considering the bands were designed and the regs were written with larger sheep in mind, is it acceptable to delay attempting to get the ring on for a few days over the 7? :sofa:.
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I've always thought it is, too. But having read the article linked above, it's made me think. :thinking: The way the article is written implies that the pain responses are age-related, rather than size-related. Presumeably to do with the development of the nervous system.
I got a good few of mine within the window this time. The remainder will get burdizzoed, which is what we did last year. They really didn't seem to notice. I'm lucky, though, having BH on hand to do it - he's very experienced and adept at it.
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Hi Sally - I don't see an article linked :dunce:
They used to not give premmie babies pain relief for even quite major procedures, because they decided they didn't feel pain. Then further research showed that that is not true, they express it differently - so many babies must have experienced horrors :'(. So I don't think it likely that under 7 days lambs feel pain any differently to when they're older, although they may appear to react differently.
The thing with tiny bits is that initially the ring doesn't fit, so they won't feel much. Surely any pain comes when the band is tight, on larger lambs or on older tiny lambs, irrespective of their age, up to a certain point? I wonder if the 7 day rule was arrived at as the result of good research, or just a general approach?
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Having got the option ( legally ) to band later if I want to and I claim the teeniest balls to band title :D I have found that it is better tolerated at 20 days rather than ten ( the earliest i can do them) The reason I feel is that at ten days they really don't want to stay down and there is probably more discomfort than later on when they have come down and will stay down. As for size, at seven days they invariably slip through the ring so pointless trying to do them younger.
So Fleecewife may well have a point in primitives that slightly later is better ( not suggesting they be done at 20 days ) its all comparrative
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Shoot, it must've been somewhere else I saw, followed and read the link. It was to a NADIS page initially, and thence to a research paper. Can anyone help?
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Found it, it was in the reawakened ear tagging thread.
There is some information on the pain caused by docking and castration in the bottom half of this NADIS article: http://www.nadis.org.uk/bulletins/lambing/lambing-part-6-–-fostering,-docking-and-castration.aspx (http://www.nadis.org.uk/bulletins/lambing/lambing-part-6-–-fostering,-docking-and-castration.aspx)
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More info on pain, with references, here:
http://wildpro.twycrosszoo.org/S/00Man/PainRumOverviews/PainProc/P06PainPrev_Lamb_Castrate_Dock.htm (http://wildpro.twycrosszoo.org/S/00Man/PainRumOverviews/PainProc/P06PainPrev_Lamb_Castrate_Dock.htm)
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Thank you Sally. The second link is particularly good. It claims that castration and tail docking at whatever age both cause significant pain to lambs, although the behaviours described have rarely occurred in the few lambs we have castrated. Mostly they just wander off with mum and get on with life. A few though have exhibited pain, to the extent that we now only castrate a few lambs which we absolutely do not want to breed, even by accident. So I'm not sure where they get the 7 day rule.
We have never tail docked, even when we had Jacobs. Northern shorttailed sheep are wonderful - wouldn't it be good to breed the short tailed trait into other breeds :sheep: :sheep:.
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I did see a study where they evaluated the various methods using cortisol level to indicate levels of pain evidenced as a stressor. In that study banding came out as less painful than burdizzo and the seven days was down to painlevels as indicated due to blood cortisol levels. To my knowledge no primitives were considered in the study.
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We have never tail docked, even when we had Jacobs. Northern shorttailed sheep are wonderful - wouldn't it be good to breed the short tailed trait into other breeds :sheep: :sheep:.
It's the first thing you loose when crossing... all my Shetland x Texel had to have their tails docked....
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We have never tail docked, even when we had Jacobs. Northern shorttailed sheep are wonderful - wouldn't it be good to breed the short tailed trait into other breeds :sheep: :sheep:.
It's the first thing you loose when crossing... all my Shetland x Texel had to have their tails docked....
Some of my crosses have short tails. This year I've only docked the Wensleydale x Shetland lambs; their tails were a good 6" long! Most of the other mothers are part Shetland (or other northern short-tailed) mind. I've been pleased that the lambs from the BFL x Shetland haven't needed docking, this year or last, and the lambs of the Dutch Texel x (Shetland x commercial) haven't needed docking either. Nor the lamb from the Icelandic x Dutch Texel.
I daren't leave my boys intact, though - our fences are nowhere near good enough ;p
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I had to dock my wensleydale x shetland tails, they were shorter than full wensleydales, but not short enough :(
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Thanks for all the advice, as of today 4 of this year's 5 bots are done successfully and no. 5 was only born yesterday...
New skill mastered :-D
Give me 10 years and I might stop being squeamish about it :-D