[burness_21]

We purchased 20 Welsh ewe lambs to run on over the winter then put in lamb next year as shearlings.

However when they arrived they all have a single yellow eid slaughter tag. We have tried to get the seller to upgrade the tags to breeding tags however he is not responding to us at all. It turns out that he is a dealer and purchased them from a slaughter market and has sold them as ewe lambs to be bred from.  What do we do? They are sweet lambs and we would like to keep them but we are now very worried about the whole tagging situation. I’m fairly new to keeping sheep and I struggle to understand the whole tagging and movement licencing side of things.

[Foobar]

Your only option to to buy some RED replacement full EID tags with YOUR flock number on.  You then cut out all the slaughter tags and replace them with the red full eid numbered pair.  Then record what you have done in your flock book.

[twizzel]

As above, just replace with double RED tags with your flock number on, simples

[bj_cardiff]

Its silly to me that the slaughter Eid tags don't have a visable number printed on them for exactly this situation, but there you go. As other have said, order red replacemrnt tags with your details on, its not a big deal or any reason for you to stress over.

I wouldn't say that you'd been diddled at all either, I'm sure it happens all the time

[shep53]

First question do all the lambs have the same flock number ?  a dealer may have made up a group from various farms .     You have 2 choices the easiest , fatten them and resell in the spring , you can leave the tags  as they are and maybe at the end make a small profit , provided you didn't pay a lot for them .    Yes you can upgrade to double red eid tags ,so long as you can trace them back to holding of birth .   The license you have should have  the sellers holding  number  so that's a start , then hopefully they were sold at auction by the breeder  , the auction mart should be able to help you get this information .

[sheeponthebrain]

surely the tags in them will have the flock number for the holding of birth.  By recording that and the red double tags you replace them with, they will be complerely traceable.   problem solved and no panic.
I'd agree with bj Cardiff and suggest you haven't been diddled either.  the dealer who sold them to you either thought they were too good or too cheap to go to slaughter.   

[shep53]

Never having been in this situation  I really don't know it states full traceability  back to holding of birth ,   if I had a full farm audit  for sfp then  I would need to account for every move  since my movement book would show I bought these lambs from someone who was not the breeder .  For me scoteid  would show full details  since  the tags were purchased , easy

[twizzel]

Yellow eid tags are only issued to the holding of birth, so unless the dealer has replaced them with his own eid yellow tags (very unlikely given the price and extra work!) then the flock number on the eid tag should trace to the holding of birth. And I can't see why a dealer would even think about doing that? So I would take the flock number on the eid as where it was born.

[Marches Farmer]

I'd also make a very clear note on your holding register explaining exactly when, what and why you retagged.  If you'd like to run it past someone "official" then I suggest your local Council Trading Standards.  In my experience they've been both helpful and practical.  When my records were inspected last year they seemed interested only in whether the dates and numbers on my movement records tallied with theirs and whether I'd recorded the identification dates of the lambs.

[shep53]

Having spoken to a couple of gov inspectors , they would want every move recorded back to birth farm . burness 21 if you order red double tags with your flock number   and have  a holding register and then come back to this thread I can explain in detail how to fill in your holding register, not a problem