Recording Hill Ewes

[Woolless]

Daft idea here - what about running about with a paintball gun to mark the ewes with poor lambs when they're out in field / hill. Then take them in, shed out painted ewes and ear notch, black tag or whatever. I'd like to see if this would work, might be difficult to burst a paintball on a ewe unless you get it on the head though.

The Red Tractor inspector won't like it, Yogi!

 

[JD-Kid]

One solution I have seen to this is a system where, once the lambs have been EID tagged at marking, a panel reader is set up at a gateway or water trough. I can't remember the details of the software but after a few times with a ewe getting scanned at the same time as a lamb/lambs, they will be linked. The system featured in a presentation at sheep breeders' round table maybe four years ago and I would think the slides will still be online to look at.

they did that in Aussie but it showed up alot of ewes swap lambs close to birth some of the more sharper guys will tell the % of diffrence and amount of swapping going on it's quite a high number.
DNA would be the best but it's a high price
did hear of some one painting the heads of the poor lambs and put back with ewes. then after a few days tip ewes over and will have raddle rub marks on them

 

[JD-Kid]

Daft idea here - what about running about with a paintball gun to mark the ewes with poor lambs when they're out in field / hill. Then take them in, shed out painted ewes and ear notch, black tag or whatever. I'd like to see if this would work, might be difficult to burst a paintball on a ewe unless you get it on the head though.

funny thing was paint ball guns started out life as stock markers then I guess the hold my beer watch this happened and the rest is history hahaha

 

[unlacedgecko]

they did that in Aussie but it showed up alot of ewes swap lambs close to birth some of the more sharper guys will tell the % of diffrence and amount of swapping going on it's quite a high number.
DNA would be the best but it's a high price
did hear of some one painting the heads of the poor lambs and put back with ewes. then after a few days tip ewes over and will have raddle rub marks on them

I sold 100 ewes with lambs at foot out a mob of 900 earlier this year and that was the approach used.

Fücking horrendous experience and not one to repeat.

The raddle paint worked well though, particularly the red.

 

[unlacedgecko]

I’d like to start recording more with my hill ewes at lambing and I’m trying to work out the best method. They lamb outside with no feed and all very hands off unless absolutely necessary. I mark any problems as culls but what I’d like to try and do is work out which ewes are rearing the poorest lambs at weaning. The tricky part is they’re wild Welsh ewes and really don’t like interference, which makes things interesting! I’m also a complete novice with any EID readers/software so any advice in this department would also be great! Thanks

If you lamb them in by, drift lamb them. So every morning move the unlambed ewes to a new paddock. Leave the fresh lambed outfits to mother up.

Then the previous day's ewes and lambs can be walked to the fank in small groups and matched up. Tag and record EID for units.

I did 700 blackie ewes with this system in Angus in 2018. Worked really well. The ewes and the dogs soon learn the system.

 

[Six Dogs]

Just to confirm it’s the issue of seeing the ewes identity not the principle of picking up and tagging the lambs?
We use Z tag management tags which are easily visible on the ewe from a distance,this is then used on an Agrident hand held reader

 

[Mossfennan Easycares]

We started recording our 700 hill Blackies in 1986, all lambed in fields or hill enclosures. The key is to have distance readable tags in the ewes with a different colour for each age group. Make sure you read the ewes number before getting off the quad to catch the lambs. Tagging round twice a day because once they are over 24 hours old you won't catch the lambs. We now use Z tag one piece management tags, and the ewes are now all Easycares and the records and weights which used to go to Signet are now processed by SIL which has more emphasis on the maternal traits.

 

[TGM]

I have a customer with 3,500 Hill sheep easycare recording all births to around 98%accuracy. Method. Before lambing read ewe eids and spray last 5 digits on ewes back.at lambing use agrident reader with numeric keypad. Read ewe from adistance. Record number of lambs etc. Pick up lambs eid tag and record sex weight etc. Set lambs down and they run back to mummy and all happy sheep and shepherd.owner then will get the ewe performance reports of 56 day and 90 day weight production once the lambs are weighed.

 

[Jameshenry]

Thats why shepherds dont carry rifles

Speak for yourself

 

[Heatgereater]

Just walk up and scan them

 

[abitdaft]

As mental as it sounds get to know your ewe's. When you are on the hill you soon get to know individual sheep. You know the flighty madams, you know the ones that will funk,. the utter witches that will feck the gather just because you are hell bent in leaving nothing behind. Then there's the ones that cannot apparently walk, funk and then disappear in seconds onto the horizon at a rate of knots usually with a tip lamb in tow! Sheep are arseholes! It's hard not to love them.

 

[abitdaft]

As mental as it sounds get to know your ewe's. When you are on the hill you soon get to know individual sheep. You know the flighty madams, you know the ones that will funk,. the utter witches that will feck the gather just because you are hell bent in leaving nothing behind. Then there's the ones that cannot apparently walk, funk and then disappear in seconds onto the horizon at a rate of knots usually with a tip lamb in tow! Sheep are arseholes! It's hard not to love them.

Sorry meant to add that you should be able to tell which lamb came from which ewe.

 

[Bury the Trash]

As mental as it sounds get to know your ewe's. When you are on the hill you soon get to know individual sheep. You know the flighty madams, you know the ones that will funk,. the utter witches that will feck the gather just because you are hell bent in leaving nothing behind. Then there's the ones that cannot apparently walk, funk and then disappear in seconds onto the horizon at a rate of knots usually with a tip lamb in tow! Sheep are arseholes! It's hard not to love them.

its called sheep sense ,that's what you have, knowing how to read them no pun intended.


Funnily enough i picked a ewe lamb to keep back out of the killing lot today because to start with she lead them all up the race, was calm and nice temperament,no guarentee she would good mother but a good starting point .. if they were all like that and had lots of lambs and milk and hardy...etc well....
ours aren't on the hill ,far rom it but getting close enough to scan eartag is not doable with a lot of them and stirring them up with fairly newborns isn't my idea o a good thing.

ime its one of the biggest problems with so much to gain or lose...lambing outdoors, linking lambs that is

but i must admit too being a bit disappointed when first getting a reader ,that they wouldnt 'zap' a tag from like 10 or 20 metres away or something would be darn useful, or even further as in like a bluetooth does for quite a distance