Hi Kathleen,
I'm also in a dry area, but without rocks. I have to trim once or twice
a year since my BB's don't have anything to wear down their feet. I use
both a sheep hoof trimmer(The "Premier" Trimmer, from Premier1), and I
also have horse hoof nippers on hand. I use the horse nippers if their
toes are a bit out of control, and for the dew claw if that needs a
trim. The rest of the hoof should be easily cut with regular trimmers.
Keep both the trimmer and nippers nice and sharp and things will be much
easier. Although I have not had too many problems with hard feet, to
help soften them up, flood their water source so that they have to stand
in water to drink. After a few days they should be softer.
-Steve
ninemilesheep.com
On 3/28/2015 4:17 PM, Kathleen Wallis wrote:
Hi, Carol,
I found this article & video very helpful. I live in typically dry
Southern California, & my sheep pens are on a boulder-filled hilly area. In
the 6 yrs. I've been raising American Blackbelly sheep, I've never had to
trim any of my sheeps' hooves. I've attributed it to the hard, rocky ground
they are on every day that must "sand" them down. Inside their shed, the
dirt is much softer but they rarely go in there. (I do fill it with straw
during lambing in case the ewes want to go in there, but they usually
don't.) However after returning to SoCal after 1 1/2 yrs. in Virginia (we
temporarily moved there for my husband's job but weren't sure how long we'd
stay so I left my sheep here to be cared for by our foreman), I noticed an
elderly ewe had noticeably overgrown hooves. I asked my vet to show me how
to trim them. He said this breeds' hooves are typically very hard &
difficult to cut through, so he did it with a horse's hoof trimmer. The Shear
Magic Hoof Trimmers suggested in this article look alot easier to handle so
I'm tempted to buy them & give them a try. My question to you is, have you
found AB's hooves to be harder than most sheeps' hooves, or is this maybe
just a SoCal phenomenon?
Thanx,
Kathleen Wallis
Eagle Rock Farm
On Fri, Mar 27, 2015 at 3:39 PM, Carol Elkins <celk...@critterhaven.biz>
wrote:
Erik, the video plays fine for me, so I'm not sure what the problem might
be on your end. You can view the video directly at YouTube.com here:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/6ffU_cBjlsk?
When you have trouble viewing an embedded video, right-click the link and
select Copy Embed Code. Paste it temporarily in a Word doc. It will look
something like this:
< iframe width="640" height="360" src="https://www.youtube.com/
embed/6ffU_cBjlsk?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0"
allowfullscreen></iframe >
Within that nonsense there is a URL to YouTube.com that contains the video
ID. Copy and paste the URL in your browser to go directly to the video in
YouTube.
Hope that helps.
Carol
At 04:26 PM 3/27/2015, you wrote:
Hi, Carol,
Excellent hoof trimming article. Thank you very much for forwarding.
For some reason, I can't get the video link at the bottom of the photo
article to come up. If others are having a similar problem, might there be
a separate link to it that could be sent our?
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