[SallyintNorth]

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?

[SallyintNorth]

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

and

More info on pain, with references, here:

http://wildpro.twycrosszoo.org/S/00Man/PainRumOverviews/PainProc/P06PainPrev_Lamb_Castrate_Dock.htm

[Fleecewife]

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  .

[kanisha]

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.

[Anke]

 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  .

It's the first thing you loose when crossing... all my Shetland x Texel had to have their tails docked....

[SallyintNorth]

 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  .

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

[sc12011]

I had to dock my wensleydale x shetland tails, they were shorter than full wensleydales, but not short enough 

[bloomer]

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