[Womble]

@Marches Farmer - I did do a trial a couple of years ago with various different marker sprays. However, this was marking the white bits. We didn't manage to find anything that stayed visible on black fleece (particularly lambs) for longer than a week.  If anybody knows better, please say so - it would make our lives considerably easier!

[SallyintNorth]

Did you ever try a make of spray recommended by one of us?  (Ie., not Richey, which is famous for not lasting to the other side of a short shower.)  Carrs Billington was my fave.  I would expect CB yellow to work on black fleeces for a couple of months at least.

And you mentioned that orange raddle paste worked well and lasted 160 days plus.  So why not use that?

[Buttermilk]

Womble for the Z's I use a single blank white tag that I write the sire and dam on with a marker pen.

Where do you buy the plain tags from Buttermilk? I have been looking for something similar to this

Caisley or Dalton.  They have the same tags.

[Womble]

Did you ever try a make of spray recommended by one of us?

Did you mean your recommendation of Carrs, Sally? That's a good point - I'll get another to try the next time I'm in.

Actually, I should apologise for whinging without actually having followed up on the advice from ages ago. For the last two years, we've been fine with marking white bits, so it's only this year that I've come up against the problem again.

Anyway, I've just marked some numbers on using orange Nettex Promark, and will report back as to how long they last.  Also, one hapless lamb just got a stripe of each colour across its back, as an experiment. In order of most visible to least, were Yellow, Orange, Red, Blue, Purple, Green.  Again, watch this space and I'll report back again in a few weeks!

[SallyintNorth]

Did you ever try a make of spray recommended by one of us?

Did you mean your recommendation of Carrs, Sally? That's a good point - I'll get another to try the next time I'm in.

I did mean that, yes . Or the Nettex which we thought might be similar.  Because I always found Richey useless on white sheep, wore off within two weeks in fine weather and overnight in wet.  Useful for treatment marks in the treatment pen - who have I done and not done - but not for anything you need to be longer-lasting.

[Foobar]

I can recommend Nettex Promark (not Marksman) for black sheep.  Yellow, orange, purple, blue, avoid red (weirdly) and green.


I tag at 24hrs (when I weigh them), and don't castrate in general, but if I do (rarely) I tend to wait until day 7 as mine are a small breed.

[Womble]

OK, so I did my wee marking experiment nine days ago. Here are the sprays I used:



And here's what they're looking like on stripey the lamb now:



Not too bad.... but considerably harder to see in even a little bit of shadow.



That said, the orange Promark seems to be holding up reasonably well, having sprayed it on pretty thickly:



If it's still visible at first heptavac, I'll consider that good enough. Watch this space, and I'll report back then!

[Womble]

OK, so here's the report three weeks later, and I'm afraid it's not great news!

Although he looked like this nine days after spraying.....



Stripey lamb is not very stripey any more:





Also the number marked on his side in red is no longer legible.

The orange numbers have done a bit better, and are still clearly readable on all the ewes:



Although some of the lamb marks were hard to read clearly. This was a two I think:



but it's clearly lost a hell of a lot of definition when compared with this photo from less than two weeks ago:



So all in all, I'm unimpressed. Until somebody brings out a spray that really works, we'll be marking with orange numbers at birth, renewing after two weeks, and then putting tags in when they get their first heptavac.

What a pity  .

[SallyintNorth]

soft cough.   You still haven't tried the Carrs Billington ones then?  They really did outperform all the others I've tried - in a different league.

[Womble]

soft cough.

 

Alright, alright! I'll get some in the name of scientific research then, Sally.  Yellow, you say?

[SallyintNorth]

soft cough.

 

Alright, alright! I'll get some in the name of scientific research then, Sally.  Yellow, you say?

I think I'd try the orange, since that is the colour that performed best on your trials so far.

[Womble]

Alright! So I now have a lamb with a C on one side for 'Carrs', and a P on the other side for 'Promark'. Stripey lamb is also looking good again, though I do wonder what my neighbours think I'm up to!

FYI @SallyintNorth , the batch codes on the bottom of both cans are in exactly the same format, so I suspect they're the same stuff anyway. Let's see!!

[SallyintNorth]

FYI @SallyintNorth , the batch codes on the bottom of both cans are in exactly the same format, so I suspect they're the same stuff anyway. Let's see!!

Lol.  I await results with interest 

[pharnorth]

I don't think you are taking this seriously enough @Womble .  It clearly needs a proper stencil for your postcode and a 'return to' label until those ear tags are in.

[Foobar]

Go @Womble!!  I look forward to the results!