Ear Tags

[Ruus]

All of my sheep had mini rectangular tags when I got them.

The man I bought them from doesn't tag sheep unless he sells them, so all four had had the tags put in the morning they were brought here. Within 48 hours the only sheep left with a tag was the ram, and I'm sure that's only because his ear is completely encircled with horn, so it would be hard for him to get the tag caught on anything or rub/scrape it against anything. Now I have two ewes with scarred ears, one ewe with an ear completely ripped in half, and no ewes with tags. So those were rather a bust, but I liked that they were small and unobtrusive. I'd hate to use the triangular tags, as my sheep are so small that even mini triangular tags are too heavy for the lambs' ears to support, and look ginormous even on adults. I'm not sure what I'll do for tags when I go to sell the lambs. Although... I suppose I could get around it by simply NOT selling any of the lambs... *plots to keep all the lambies!*

 

[n8ivetxn]

I use the same tag as Roving Jacobs, with the Scrapie ID on one side and the animal number on the other. My lambs have such tiny ears, even the little tags look awful. One of my ram lambs was slowly tearing his out, so I caught him and cut it off, waiting for the replacement now.... I think it must have been irritating him and he was rubbing it on something, he just wouldn't let it heal up. Next time I'll go further up the ear, hopefully it'll hold better.

The members of the flock that I bought have the triangle shape, small tag. I like it too.

I don't like to tag, that has to be painful. So, having one tag with all the necessary info is good for me.