Depending on who you sell to, you may be able to put the scrapie tag in an envelop and ask them to apply it when the lamb's ears are bigger. This will work only if you trust the person to follow through, and they will also need an applicator. This is not complying with the law, but it is a more humane way of managing the tags for our blackbellies.
And even lambs sold at weaning age (12 weeks or so) have ears that are better able to handle a scrapie tag than younger lambs. My point is that you need to wait until the last possible moment to tag your sheep. On my farm, I don't tag until I take a lamb in to get his health certificate for transport. The vet won't issue the certificate without a scrapie tag. (I suppose we should be glad our sheep have any ears at all. The folks raising La Mancha goats (which are earless) have an interesting dilemma. I believe they tattoo, which is REALLY a pain--literally.) Carol At 04:34 PM 3/14/2006 -0500, you wrote: >I don't >plan on tagging my sheep unless I sell them, but I did hope to sell some >before they are 5 or 6 months old. It doesn't seem to be a good situation >with the tags. _______________________________________________ This message is from the blackbelly mailing list Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info
