Sheep And Goat
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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
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