Bloodless castrators (burdizzo) would be my first choice, but it’s a two person job and the operators must be very skilled. Now I’m on a very small farm with just two calves a year, I don’t have a second experienced person, so I go for the sure, safe, and if done correctly and within the first few days, appears to be no more painful than a dead arm when you’ve slept on it, elastration. I was worried I maybe hadn’t got Luther’s, he showed absolutely no sign of pain or distress whatsoever. (I had got them.)
It’s a trade off, whether to castrate lambs or not. If you have the facilities to separate entire males from all the females at no more than fourteen weeks, and can cope if you have to keep entire males longer than planned, then not castrating is certainly an option. It’s not for us, so we choose, again, elastration, in the first few days if the testicles are big enough. As we increase the size of our sheep, small testicles should become thing of the past, so we should be able to do everyone at 24-36 hours, when they show very little discomfort, and only fleetingly.