Ear Tags

[jdarling]

I am about to start a tagging system for my flock. I was wondering what system you all use. From my original flock ... the ewes had green numbered tags, and the wethers had yellow numbered tags. So what I could tell by just looking at them was if they were ewes or wethers.

 

I've since culled all my wethers, and will continue to do so, so I'm thinking I don't need to tag the wethers. What I'd like to be able to tell from the tagged ewes is what year they born, and maybe who the sire is? This is one of those cases of you don't know what you don't know.

 

How do you tag your sheep, and what information can you glean by just looking at their tags, or lack thereof?

 

Thanks!

Jodi

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Jodi,

 

I use a different color every year, following the ROYGBIV spectrum, although the IV gets a little fudgey because it's hard to get Blue versus Indigo and violet tags. I usually come up with a wild weird color to replace indigo and use purple for violet.

 

I tag all lambs at birth. Ewes get a tag in the right ear, wethers and rams in the left. I just use a sequential birth number, but the first number of the serial is the year. For example, this year's lambs will get yellow tags starting with 8001. In the fall when I select my keeper lambs, I will add a white federal Scrapie ID tag to the opposite ear from the birth tag.

 

These ear tag numbers are stored in a computer database that will tell me the lamb's sire and dam (and the rest of the pedigree if known), birth date, birth type, siblings, birth mates, birth weight, weaning weight (and any other weights I have recorded), and then later, if the sheep is retained and bred, I can track its offspring as well.

 

So while not too much information is stored directly on the ear tag, most of what I need to know in the field is there: sex and approximate age of lambs based on the number, age of ewes based on color. The tag number links back to the data on the computer.

 

I have considered using a notching system to indicate sire breed, but haven't gone that far yet.

 

For birth tags, I use Premier's Snapp tags. The scrapie ID tags are the free Premier 2Xte tags.

 

I also carry a bunch of black ear tags that go into the ears of ewes I plan to cull.

[Ugly Dog]

Hi Jody,

 

I use Premier's mini-tags personalized with my farm name and consecutive numbers.

 

The numbers are easily read from a few feet away and I keep records based on the ear tag number. I can tell you who the parents are, siblings, year born, progency records, problems, etc although I don't know it just by looking at the tag. I have to look at my record book.

 

It is a neat idea to use a different color for each year... I imagine I would forget what all of the colors mean.

 

My rams are all sold, or whethered and sold, or put in the freezer - they only get scrapie tags unless they are sold with papers and then they get a farm tag as well. I know some folks use different colors for ewes and lambs but I find that Mother Nature's means of tagging for boys vs. girls is adequate for my purposes...

[Bill Fosher]

It is a neat idea to use a different color for each year... I imagine I would forget what all of the colors mean.

 

That's where using the spectrum sequence helps. I know that an orange ear tag means either 2000 or 2007, red means 1999 or 2006. The hardest part is when the color is about four off of where I am now -- so is a blue one 2002 or 2003 -- I have to think for a minute before I figure out that it's 2003. But at that stage in a ewe's life, it's not real important to know if she's coming on five or coming on six.

 

 

I know some folks use different colors for ewes and lambs but I find that Mother Nature's means of tagging for boys vs. girls is adequate for my purposes...

 

I developed the right/left ear tagging system to avoid having to look for nature's tags. They're not placed real conveniently for when the lambs are coming down a single-file race into a shedding gate.

[trailrider]

I also change colors each year and use left ear for ewe lambs, right ear for ram lambs. However, I don`t have control of the lambing this past year. Some are lambing twice - due to rams breeding back by 3 months, and the 3 times the mature ram jumped some fences. Today, 2 ewes lambed - with no ear tag left. Black sheep are hard to read tattoo markings. I changed the ear side 5 years ago, so I can tell one new mom is over 4 years old. I like the black tag idea, Bill. I don`t keep tremendous records, but with 76 lambs in the barn, plus the 25 sold by Christmas, maybe I should rethink. What is a good solution to those lost tags??

[NorthfieldNick]

I do as Bill does- ewes, left ear, wethers, right ear. I also do the 8001, etc thing. Ewes I decide to keep get a farm tag, which has a flock ID (either an NF or H).

 

If I've used more than one ram, and it won't be obvious who sired the lambs (ie one ram was a hair sheep), I'll add a letter to the lamb tags. A few years ago, I used a Romney and a Cheviot on Romney cross ewes. I had tags that said 6001R or 6001C. It worked fairly well.

 

I keep insane records, just because I'm a detail nut. I have to cross-reference an ear tag number to a page in a notebook to find out the details. I tried the computer program, but I found I just didn't enter the data.

[jdarling]

Thank you everyone for the information. This is great stuff!

 

Jodi

[Bill Fosher]

What is a good solution to those lost tags??

 

The first step is to use a good tag an install it properly. With the Snapp tags I've found that I lose about one out of 100 in the first year, and then virtually none after that. I've buried 10 year old sheep with their birth tags still in their ears, still legible.

 

A hint in maintaining legibility: get the tag number printed on both sides of the tag. The latest batch of scrapie tags I got does that, finally.

 

The second step is to have a backup tag -- I use the mandatory scrapie tag for that purpose.

 

The third step is to inventory regularly and track down any missing tags. It's a lot easier to devine who is who if you're only looking for one ewe with a missing tag. If there are two or three, it involves a lot of guesswork.

 

The fourth step is to transcend that which you cannot resolve.

[Mona Howard]

I also use the Premier mini-tag. In 2007 all the tags start with

the number seven. So tag number 209 means it's the ninth lamb

born in 2007. A tag in the right ear means a single. If the tag is

in the left ear they are a multiple birth. I do not tag the wethers,

and a ram lamb will get a tag when I deem he's worth keeping

entire. So I can tell at a glance how old the ewe is and if she's

a multiple or single. Helps when people come out to buy ewes

for breeding. Sire and dam has to be looked at in a little book

I keep on the sheep.

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

I've always done what Mona did (last digit of year corresponds to first digit of tag number), except one year when almost all my tags were removed by a young guard dog pup in training. fortunately my flock was very small that year - which is forever known as the "Orange Tag Year" - and since I had good reasons for keeping all those ewes, I can "ken" all of them.

 

I also tatoo them after that incident. I really like this because my sheep do lose their tags pretty frequently (I haven't yet switched to the 2X tags - I ordered those little rectangle tags way, way ahead - what WAS I thinking? - and being Scottish, even tough I didn't pay for them, I feel like I have a moral obligation to use them up). I have a small problem with the tatooing that I usually resolve by having a friend help out. I am severely dyslexic and loading those numbers is a nightmare. Without help I have put the numbers back to front many, many times over. I'd love one of those chain-driven stamps but yikes, it costs as much as a good shearing machine!

 

I do boys on the right and girls on the left. I notch cull ewes - it's easier for me to spot if the sheep are facing me. My first large set of sheep came from a flock where they had been notched once if they were a twin, and twice if they were a triplet. I thought it was a good idea to be able to have that information right there on the sheep for feeding purposes later, but it felt a bit like the poor things were being punished for having good potential.

 

I've got a couple of rams picked out as potential flock sires, and I'll put a special tag in them. With my migraine-fogged brain last fall, I loaded up a bunch of ewe lambs to finish at a friend's and loaded last year's ram lamb (and this year's Easter Dinner), too. She's being very nice about it and holding him, but I've got to get down and redeem him soon or we will have no Easter dinner!

[jdarling]

Ok ... more questions.

 

I went to several livestock supply places just to see what they had before I ordered the tags Bill is suggesting. One thing the people said about many of the tags we were looking at is how the numbers will fade after about a year or so unless they are the lasered ones. In looking at the tags, the "regular" ones had very black lettering, and the "lasered" ones had like a dark grey lettering. How long does the lettering on the small tags last? I know you said the tags themselves hardly ever fall off and can last ten years, but are you able to read the numbers say five years from now?

 

In 2007 all the tags start with the number seven. So tag number 209 means it's the ninth lamb born in 2007.

 

Thanks, Mona. Did you mean "709" would be the ninth lamb born in 2007? I like your idea of left/right for single/multiple births. And then not tagging a ram until we decide to integrate him.

 

Becca, please tell me about notch culling. What do you use to notch? Is it messy at all? I know Pat S. mentioned not buying any lambs at the sale that have been notched because many of the shepherds will notch cull.

 

I like the idea of being able to tell as much as I can about who's who just by looking at them because that's where I spend most of my time. So this whole discussion has been very helpful. Thanks a ton!

 

Jodi

[Caroline Reichard]

This is slightly off topic but still related.

 

In addition to tagging lambs, many of us spray paint the ewe's number on the lambs. When the numbers are fresh enough to read, this can save infinite time if you have to sort a family group out. I have tried to tweak this a bit so that even when the numbers fade, the paint is still of some use in identifying lambs from a distance.

 

At one point, I had a lot of choices in spray paint colors, and I assigned a paint color that corresponded as closely as possible with the color of the Mom's ear tag (eg, a ewe tagged Red-38 would have 38 spray painted in red on her lambs. White-94 would have her numbers sprayed in black, since white spray paint is not much help.) This could really be useful. Nowadays, there don't seem to be enough spray paint color choices to make this work, but I still spray singles in one color, twins in another, and trips in a third. Even at 6 months old, some years you can still see a bit of the spray paint on the lambs, and it's a helpful guide to see how well animals have grown out.

 

Now this is really off topic, but I have been meaning to post it. On the subject of trips: like most, I guess I am happy to see them when they are healthy. They are cute and all, and they help to bring up my lambing rate that 200% mark where we all like to be. But the sad fact is that I cannot get them to grow out as well as I want, and often those prized triplet ewe lambs turn out to be awfully weeny as yearlings. I have managed to keep them growing out well until they are 3 months or so, but once they ae 100% on grass, many never seem to keep up with their twin sisters (not to mention the singles). So I'd like some advice for growing out triplets well. I think I am doing all the right stuff: creeps, lots of extra food for the ewes, the best pasture, etc, but it can still go wrong. BTW, in my operation I will usually only have 5 or so sets of trips a year. I have enough pasture that by mid/late April everybody except the trip families is 100% on pasture with no grain. Typically, at that time I put he trip groups in their own pasture, with a creep and grain for the ewes, until the lambs are 3 months old or so. After that, I get into logistical problems about keeping them seperate with free access to sufficient pasture as they will have eaten down my little grazing areas. My sense is that it is at that it is at weaning that they really start to lose the growth rate race against the other lambs.

[Bill Fosher]

I went to several livestock supply places just to see what they had before I ordered the tags Bill is suggesting. One thing the people said about many of the tags we were looking at is how the numbers will fade after about a year or so unless they are the lasered ones. In looking at the tags, the "regular" ones had very black lettering, and the "lasered" ones had like a dark grey lettering. How long does the lettering on the small tags last? I know you said the tags themselves hardly ever fall off and can last ten years, but are you able to read the numbers say five years from now?

 

The laser imprints last longer than any ink ever has. I think I started using laser-imprinted tags in 2002, and they're all still just a readable as the day they went in, except for ear wax and crud that builds up on them on some sheep.

 

I know Pat S. mentioned not buying any lambs at the sale that have been notched because many of the shepherds will notch cull.

 

I wouldn't bring home anything from a sale, notched or otherwise.

[Bill Fosher]

On the subject of trips: like most, I guess I am happy to see them when they are healthy. They are cute and all, and they help to bring up my lambing rate that 200% mark where we all like to be.

 

I just have to interject here and say that we don't all necessarily want a 200 percent lambing rate. It's a rare ewe that can raise three lambs on pasture and not have at least one of them be runty. There are flocks that are exceptions to this rule, but they have generally spent years, if not decades, selecting for ewes that can do it, often using computerized genetic evaluation programs like NSIP or LambPlan. For my ewe flock, I've found that the tipping point is somewhere around 185 percent. If it gets too high above that, the increased number of lambs is offset by reduced collective weaning weights. That is, I can wean nearly as many total pounds of lamb at 185 percent as I do at 200 percent.

 

 

But the sad fact is that I cannot get them to grow out as well as I want, and often those prized triplet ewe lambs turn out to be awfully weeny as yearlings. I have managed to keep them growing out well until they are 3 months or so, but once they ae 100% on grass, many never seem to keep up with their twin sisters (not to mention the singles). So I'd like some advice for growing out triplets well. I think I am doing all the right stuff: creeps, lots of extra food for the ewes, the best pasture, etc, but it can still go wrong. BTW, in my operation I will usually only have 5 or so sets of trips a year. I have enough pasture that by mid/late April everybody except the trip families is 100% on pasture with no grain. Typically, at that time I put he trip groups in their own pasture, with a creep and grain for the ewes, until the lambs are 3 months old or so. After that, I get into logistical problems about keeping them seperate with free access to sufficient pasture as they will have eaten down my little grazing areas. My sense is that it is at that it is at weaning that they really start to lose the growth rate race against the other lambs.

 

Two things occur to me. First, do you actually weigh the lambs when you wean them? I suspect that you'd find the triplets might look as good as the others at approximately 90 days, but I bet the scale would tell you that they're actually five to 10 pounds lighter than their twin counterparts and 10 to 15 pounds lighter than the singles. If that's the case, it's a serious setback to a grazing animal. as rumen capacity is a function of live weight.

 

The second is that you're probably setting them back by taking away both their grain source and their milk source at the same time. The lamb's gut adjusts to the feeds it's eating; even if they're eating some grass along with their grain, it's going to take some time -- perhaps has much as month -- for the rumen bugs to adjust to the all-grass diet. And all the starch-eating flora and fauna are going to still be there in the meantime, taking up resources and inefficiently processing cellulosic and lignified feeds. It sounds as if your twins and singles don't have to make this adjustment, which just gives them a further advantage over the triplets.

 

If the triplets are not so great as yearlings and you make your decisions about breeding stock based on that, you're selecting for yearling weight, and you'll probably end up with a flock with slightly lower prolificacy than the 200 percent you're aiming for. Remember that a ewe is growing until she's 30 months old -- even as long as 36 months in some breeds, so there's still time for compensatory gain after the yearling mark.

[Caroline Reichard]

I just have to interject here and say that we don't all necessarily want a 200 percent lambing rate.

 

This seems to be part of what I'm realizing. For me, by far the most desirable feature of a ewe is to be able to lamb on her own and successfully raise healthy lambs w/ as little intervention from me as possible. I give supplemental grain as necessary, but I try to organize things so that I get the maximum benefit possible from my pasture. My sheep are mainly cheviot-texel crosses: the slow growth and small size of the cheviots doesn't bother me as much as their ability to lamb out and thrive on grass pleases me. The meatier texel influence still does well on grass and is calmer to handle, although I think they and their lambs can be too lazy for my taste at lambing time so I keep the % of Texel low.

 

Given my priorities, I think you're right, and I should ask myself if I want to lamb at 200% for the same reason I wore blue eyeshadow and platform shoes in junior high school - w/ similarly unsatisfying results. I have been selecting for trips whenever possible, but I'm aware that my triplet pen is far more work (and expense) than every other sheep on the farm put together, so perhaps I ought to start rethinking how I select my replacement sheep. On that note, is tripleting hereditary w/ the ram? My current rams are both trips themselves.

 

Two things occur to me. First, do you actually weigh the lambs when you wean them? I suspect that you'd find the triplets might look as good as the others at approximately 90 days, but I bet the scale would tell you that they're actually five to 10 pounds lighter than their twin counterparts

 

No, I don't weigh them, so I'm sure you're right.

 

The second is that you're probably setting them back by taking away both their grain source and their milk source at the same time.

 

This will be easy to change; thanks very much for the advice.

[Bill Fosher]

On that note, is tripleting hereditary w/ the ram? My current rams are both trips themselves.

 

Multiple birth is much more influenced by environment than by heredity, but heredity does have a major influence. I know that sounds like I'm saying the sky is blue except when it's not blue, and pretty much that's the case. If you go down the list of things that have an impact on ewe prolificacy, heredity is probably third or fourth on the list, behind nutritional status, physical stress in early gestation, and general health.

 

In any event, the ram's hereditary effect will be seen in the prolificacy of his offspring, not in the prolificacy of the ewes that he breeds. There are some major exceptions to this -- low libido and low sperm count in rams can affect the prolificacy of the ewes that they breed, and both are somewhat hereditary. The only purely environmental factor that can reduce prolificacy is a lack of ram power -- that is, expecting a ram to breed too many ewes in too short a time. But if there are enough rams for the ewes, and if libido and sperm counts are normal -- even on the low end of normal -- they won't be the limiting factor in the number of lambs that a ram sires. That will be determined by the number of eggs shed by the ewe, the number of embryos that implant, and the number of implanted embryos that survive.

 

The effect of a ram's genetics on multiple birthing can be important, but I don't think that you can really say, "This ram is a triplet, so his daughters are more likely to have triplets than twins or singles." I think you can probably say that his daughters are more likely to have multiples than singles, but I wouldn't go much further than that without genetic cross-referencing.

[Mona Howard]

>>Thanks, Mona. Did you mean "709" would be the ninth lamb born in 2007?<<

Yes! Sorry! Also you could use different colors to denote different sires.

 

 

On multiples: I would not pass up a ram lamb born a single that I liked if his

dad was from a family that threw multiples and the dam usually threw multiples

too. Mona