Castration disappointment

Womwotai

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If you're not trying to band him and pick him up, can you feel the testicles then? Not under duress per say? If you can't then maybe he is undescended but my bet is they slipped up during the confusion.
Instead of a standing position, have the head and body upright, just not on his back. they're still going to point down with gravity.
I checked again this morning. This time I left him standing and felt for them. I can "just" feel them up against the abdomen but was not able to pull them down into the sack at all - and I tried. I can even get my fingers up around one but when I gently tug on it to try to encourage it to move down into the sack, it doesn't move. I will just keep checking every few days and hope they descend before he gets too large to band.
 

Four Winds Ranch

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four winds ranch - its really interesting to do with calves. Pissed-off cow 2 inches from your face bellowing and frothing at the mouth generally isn't helpful either(but know the girls and they will not actually touch me) . Haven't missed any banding them like this by myself yet *knock-on-wood*, 10 yrs of clean banding record with the cows and 5 with the sheep, fingers crossed it stays that way XXXXX .
Nice!!! I haven't attempted a calf by myself yet!!! ;)
 

BrownSheep

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Womwotai since your new to sheep I would suggest finding another farmer to show you how. It is a lot easier to do it after you have seen it in person.

I bought 4-h lambs from a guy who didn't know how to castrate..we ended up with "weathers" one which had 1 testical and no scrotum and the other had 1 .5 testicles.
 

Womwotai

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Womwotai since your new to sheep I would suggest finding another farmer to show you how. It is a lot easier to do it after you have seen it in person.

I bought 4-h lambs from a guy who didn't know how to castrate..we ended up with "weathers" one which had 1 testical and no scrotum and the other had 1 .5 testicles.
I feel pretty confident in using the bander (practiced quite a bit before attempting the first castration), and the actual process of banding went smoothly until I realized the testicles aren't descended. I think it will be fine once they are - the disappointment in the subject line is only that we experienced an "anomaly" on the first one :) It would have been nice to have the first be routine. My next door neighbor is a large animal vet (I know, lucky, right?) so I can always ask her to take a look, but since I can feel the testicles up against the abdomen and can't get them to move down, I think it is just a matter of watch and wait until they do.

Yowza - 1.5 testicles sounds painful….poor guy.
 

BrownSheep

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That is a great deal! I just thought I would suggest it since it helped us a lot.

Yeah, they had to go be surgically castrated.
 
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