I have shown my own sheep for 30-plus years simply because I enjoy it. The odd rosette or two is always a welcome bonus but not the main criteria. Socially it’s good to catch up with other exhibitors and I enjoy the opportunities to interact with show visitors; if just a couple of people leave the show with a better and more positive understanding of our industry, that is a win to me, but primarily I enjoy putting forward good sheep to be shown and judged.

Alan wrote to me in April, after his first lambing season using ClipFitter
Lambing, although rather straight forward did drag on rather longer this year than I would normally expect, the Lleyn weren’t too bad but the other half’s Herdys were rather more challenging and almost six weeks of late nights and early mornings do sadly take rather more of a toll with advancing years.  However all done now and lambs are growing  growing on well with some very smart Lleyn on the ground, the only cloud (or should that be lack of cloud), on the horizon being a lack of rain, although I suspect that the contrary would be the case in your part of the world.   In the past month we have had just 2mm of rain and things are staring to dry out rather too rapidly and will significantly impact grass supplies if we don’t get a decent  drop of rain fairly soon, already some poached patches around hay feeders that were over seeded are in danger of failing in spite of having a very good initial germination.

 

Anyway, to return to the Clipfitter, I was very pleased with the performance of the clips. I have no lambs with tails (other than those that are meant to have them); I did have one of the earlier Lleyn lambs that lost it’s clip so was redone, somewhat later than technically it should have been for England, but with no issues, I simply caught it up, applied a new clip in the original location and sent it on its way back to its mum with absolutely no reaction, adverse or otherwise.  Castration I found a little more fiddly but I suspect that is simply down to developing and practicing a new technique having been used to some fifty years of applying rubber rings.  The response of lambs to clips with castration has been surprisingly minimal, but maybe that surprise is just down to  me being rather anthropomorphic.

One other observation was that, in my view and it is only a very minor point,  the clips leaves the remaining tail very much tidier, from an aesthetic point of view I really like the look and in the show ring I think it may just add a little.  I suspect this is due to the pressure being applied in a straight line across the tail leaving a nice square end.

Overall I have been very pleased with the performance of the clips and now have several sets of Elastrator applicators that I feel are surplus to requirements, maybe I should get them sold off before the market collapses.  Thank you for your support in replacing and upgrading the applicator, the superior model is I must say rather more comfortable in the hand and easier to handle