When we had Manx / Shetland crosses, we found that by 3 days old, their balls hadn't reliably dropped yet, but by 3.5 days old, they were too fast to catch!
We then switched to Zwartbles, which whilst still too quick to catch, don't usually think to run away, because their mum's don't think to teach them!
The big disadvantage of Zs is that it's hard to mark a number on the lambs and ewes, so for a while we colour coded tails or heads instead.
Unfortunately now, we've got more ewes than we have colours, so we've had to think of a new plan!
So, the new plan is to put just the single visual tag in # before turn-out at 2 days old, and to castrate at the same time (though obviously we wouldn't turn out castrated lambs right away). We also plan to use the left over tags from last year for the wethers, but with their Zwartbles Association numbers filed off. That way, because we change the visual tag colour yearly, we'll be able to tell at a glance which ones have been castrated.
# Can anybody tell me if this is actually allowed? It makes logical sense in that it halves the chance of torn ears or lambs with their heads caught in the creep feeder, but I do wonder if I'd get my wrists slapped if we were given a spot inspection?