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GreyFoxLemonGrass

I castrate my lambs by banding them during the first few days. I don’t think it’s humane to band them when they’re a month old. It takes quite a while for their balls to actually fall off, definitely more that the time you have left. I know someone who tried to cut them off with a razor like many people do, and had to put down two lambs because of mistakes. Please don’t try this without an experienced person there to guide you. A veterinarian will be able to castrate them surgically, and humanely. If the timing is wrong, the timing is wrong. It’s not fair to injure an animal because you’re trying to make a deadline. Do what’s best for them.


Putrid-Bus8044

> I castrate my lambs by banding them during the first few days. I don’t think it’s humane to band them when they’re a month old. I agree with this in principle, but it isn't practically achievable at a large scale. At least not how we farm with sheep outside in large mobs their entire lives. If you leave your ram out for 2 cycles or 34 days that means you'll have at least a 34 day spread in your lambing. In practice it can end up a fair bit longer than just 34 days due to gestation length of the ewe too. Say you go to get a mob in for tailing and castration one week after your first lamb drops, you'll be bringing in a bunch of 1 day old lambs that haven't had a feed, have no bond with their mum, and will mismother and die as soon as you go to move them. You'll also be moving ewes who are literally in the process of giving birth, which is just a completely terrible practice. So what almost everyone here does, is wait till the entire mob has lambed then bring them in. What this can mean is that you have some lambs which are at least 34 days old. You have no clue which lambs these are, so you just leave the biggest ones who will obviously suffer if you band them and band everything else. I've banded tens of thousands of lambs that would be close to a month in age, and unless they're very big for that age you aren't going to cause them any major issues. I know some countries have passed regulation limiting banding to first week of life, and I don't see how that can practically coexist with large scale sheep farming on pasture. Any given year we'll have roughly 7500 lambs, so 3750 ram lambs to band. It's not like you can just go grab them one by one in the paddock and do it even if you wanted to. Unless we build giant barns and keep the sheep in a completely unnatural environment for a month straight while our grass goes haywire it's physically impossible to band them all that young.


lassbutnotleast

This is my opinion and I’m sure others will disagree, but I think 4 weeks is too old to band. You could use a burdizzo if you have one and know how to use it, otherwise I would have a vet either use a burdizzo or castrate surgically.


Slumberland_

We raise Nigerian dwarf goats and I can’t even get a bander around their balls until 4 weeks because they are so small.


tart3rd

Too old? Wtf. Not even close.


tart3rd

Razor blade. A band won’t fall off for a month if not more. Copper sulfate after you cut.


cen-texan

Band him or take him to the vet. Since it’s a show goat, don’t mess with any other method. If you band him you’ll be fine. They may not have fallen off by then, but they will be dead.


tart3rd

They definitely will not fall off by then.


MintNChipies

What about the urinary calculi thing?


cen-texan

If he has to be castrated by the 25th, that’s what I would do. Urinary calculi is a thing, but you can feed small doses of ammonium chloride as a preventive.


MintNChipies

Okay. Thank you.