jumping all over me to get to the trough; they all go to cull.
EEEK! I might as well just send all of ours away and start again then!
I did sort {the triplets} out but had thought it was going to be a vet job. Do I breed her again?
Logically, the only way to approach this is to try to figure out whether what happened was chance, or whether it had something to do with the ewe. If it was pure chance, then (apart from the tendency to have triplets again next year), it makes no sense to cull her#, as statistically, her replacement stands the same chance of the same upset.
If it was to do with the ewe, again, logically there are two possibilities - firstly it was the ewe's fault, or secondly it was a management error, for example over or under feeding, using the wrong tup, etc.
The trouble is, in a small flock, it's hard to get statistically significant data. For example, we had three lambs last year with inturned eyelids. That alone would have been enough for me not to use that tup again, had I not spoken to his previous owner (who I trust), who said she'd never seen it in her lambs. Sure enough, we've had no problems at all this year.
# We've been pretty brutal in culling any ewe that has problems (partly because I would never sell on a problem ewe). On one hand, I hope this will pay long term dividends. On the other hand, this means lambing lots of first timers, year after year. It also severely dents the short term productivity of the flock, because we have more hoggs kicking about not being productive for a year. There's a balance to be struck somewhere..... but where?