[Jacob-list] Re:Wethering Lambs

[Chovhani]

One of the reasons we left the UK was too much government interference 
in what we did. In Canada the laws are increasing, but none exist 
regarding elastrators that I know of. Farmers are already on the verge 
of mutiny over the increased rules as it is. There are no laws here 
regarding tail docking that I know of either. We don't dock at all. I am 
not one to argue with nature unless strictly necessary. The only law 
here I'm aware of is that sheep must be sheared by a certain date to 
avoid heatstroke. We live too far out in the middle of nowhere to have 
to worry about laws anyway, but we do shear as early as we can.

BTW We used an elastrator on our male cats at over one year of age. They 
suffered far less than the previous guys did from surgery.

Melanie

MarmontJacobs at aol.com wrote:

>Hi all,
>       I'm amazed that you are allowed to use an elastrator at 2 months - in 
>the UK, it is illegal after 7 days of age, although I personally think a 
>couple of weeks is a better deal all round - sometimes they just haven't 
>dropped enough and escape the indignity. We must burdizzo after that or call 
>the vet. After a couple of years of only "doing" mismarked lambs, I have 
>returned to doing most of my male lambs: the reason being that they seem to 
>put so much energy into their horns that it is hard to finish them off grass 
>by the autumn (January born) and there are far too many average rams around. 
>This year I've kept back the 7 most promising all round.
>    What do you do about tails? Here, the Jacob is classed as a hill breed, 
>so retains 2/3 of it's tail - some don't tail at all, but we have bad fly 
>trouble here in East Anglia. In the UK it is illegal to short dock, but I 
>recently read an article in our National Sheep Association magazine on 
>showing sheep in the US - the author stated that all the sheep he saw were 
>tail-less, and that the last vertebra is sometimes surgically removed. Is 
>this all true?
>Trisha M-S
>
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