[Cheviot]

Hi,

I'm just trying to be organised ( for once ), I don't start lambing until end of April.
We have in total approx 300 sheep, this includes a small flock of 24 Hebribdean sheep, of which 5 of them are registered, all of them ran with a registered tup, I am a memeber of the Heb society, so I can registered any lambs from the 5 registered ones, providing they are good enough.
My problem is that I need to be able to identify which of the 5 ewes had which lambs, and be able to still identify them in October when the lambs need to be registered.
I did think about ear notching them, but don't know if that would spoil them if I wanted to sell them.

I would appreciate any ideas.
Many Thanks

Regards
Sue

[kaz]

Why don't you use a management ear tag and then cross reference that to the ewe. That way you should know which ewe had which lamb.

[MrsJ]

Yep, we tag the lambs after bonding and before we release them into the field and keep a cross check on which ewe had which lambs.  The simple tags are very cheap.

[Big Light]

You can do it when working the sheep in the fank if you put the registered ewes in a separate pen and release the lambs in singly you will see what goes to what ewe, obviously keep records when they are born so you know ewe 22 had twins one boy one girl etc but the body language of the sheep when separated and rejoined is as good as anything

[Fleecewife]

For our Heb lambs, all registered, we use 'turkey wing tags', which are tiny metal padlock shaped tags (from the supplier in Selkirk - think it's Roxanne) which you put in by hand.  The sharp bit is so thin that the newborn lamb barely feels it and it leaves no mark.  We put them in straight after birth when we are dunking the umbilicus in iodine.  Occasionally one gets lost then you can do as Big Light suggests, to identify which ewe owns the untagged lambs, if there's more than one.  We put a 3digit number on each tag and obviously record the dam, and any identifying features of the lambs, such as sex, number of horns, any eyelid problems.
Notching seems a bit drastic for something which only needs to tide you over to 4 months when the ears are big enough for the UK tags go in.  Also it would spoil the ears for selling and showing, if you want to go down that route

[Cheviot]

Hi,

Thanks for the suggestions, the turkey tags sound ideal, we do have problems with the plastic tags catching in fences and getting ripped out.
Will have to look into getting some.
Thanks again folks.

Regards
Sue