A few weeks back I bought store lambs. After the experience of two years ago when purchased store lambs brought with them the highly contagious and almost incurable lameness CODD, this time I made sure that no lame lamb made it past our gate.

So clean, short tailed, castrated (where applicable) lambs (averaging about 39 kg) cost about €85 a head home. Add another €2 a head for dosing, trace element mix, flystrike repellent and foot bathing.

But along comes another problem. Last Saturday when the lambs were assembled for weighing I noticed that about one quarter of the purchased lambs had an infection around their eartag. Some had quite bad swelling and bleeding from the incessant fly annoyance.

Presumably the sellers, adhering to the rules, tagged the lambs immediately before bringing them to the mart with a single tag per sheep. The very good weather in the interim probably added to the fly attack problem.

What do I do now?

My plan is to ask the Department of Agriculture to ask, if on welfare grounds I could remove the single tags.

Sick heifer

I also had a recent veterinary issue with a heifer. For a few weeks I had noticed a heifer was dribbling a lot but otherwise seemed healthy and was in good flesh. Finally I decided that I would factory the heifer rather that go the expense of calling a vet.

But on the day that she was to go to the factory she looked a lot worse. She was not in a condition that I would like to see her entering the food chain.

She wasn’t running a temperature. A superficial examination revealed nothing stuck in the throat but maybe a bit of swelling on the tongue.

I got onto the internet. The heifer showed all the signs of an old fashioned condition called “Timber Tongue”. The commentary said that the condition was caused by actinobacillus a normal inhabitant of the mouth that can enter the blood through a cut or bruise. It usually responds to tetracycline. I administered about 35 cc of long acting Alamycin. Happily the heifer seems to have made a full recovery.