Sheep And Goat (Continued from Page 17) eye on your animals and when you see one ot them limping, catch them up and check their feet. It may just be mud caked in the hooves or it may be foot rot. Keep a sharp pair of trimmers in your back pocket and a bottle of Hoff ’N Heel handy. Trim back the hooves and check for rot. Treat with an appropriate medicine and keep an eye on them. If the problem seems widespread, check with your vet about a systemic treatment and set up a foot bath situation so that the animals must walk through it a couple of times a day. Again, check with your vet about the effective ness of various materials which can be used in the foot baths. Long-term, see if there are ways to configure your barnyard situation to reduce or eliminate places where water and mud collects. Sometimes a little timely scraping and spreading a little stone can make life a lot better for the flock or herd. The best markets for lambs and goats is late fall and early winter. That means they should be dropped in September and October. In order to get such lambs and kids to market weight, the ewes or does should be bred in April and May. For some sheep and goat breeds which are not po lyestrous it may be necessary to resort to various cy cling methods, either natural using light, or through chemical means. Again, your vet would be a good source of information. If you have young animals on the ground at this time several things should be considered. First of all, a creep area is very important to getting your babies to market at optimum weight and as quickly as possible. As early as three or four days of age, lambs and kids will begin to pick at feed and hay. Good quality feed appropriate for young animals and a good quality hay should be available to them at all times. Unless you plan to keep ewe lafnbs, docking tails and castrating ram lambs or male kids are unneces sary activities. They do not add to the value of the animals in the marketplace and they place great stress on the animals. However, vaccinating for entertoxemia (com monly called with Clostridium Per fringens Types C & D along with Tetanus is an excellent practice. The first dose is given at two to three weeks and a second dose is given three weeks later. There is a withdrawal period so be aware of this as you plan your marketing schedule. The vaccine is 18 (Turn to Page 19)