SHEEP AND GOAT FLOCK HEALTH
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• Handling systems that are properly designed allow sheep or goats to flow through smoothly with minimal stress and injury. • When you have to work with sheep and goats and there is no handling system, it is necessary to pack them into a small, fenced space or in a long working pen, 1 to 1.5 meters wide. Work your way (vaccinating, spraying, other health activities) along the pen, keeping the treated animals behind you. Make sure to separate treated from untreated animals. • Weighing scales, tipping cradles and treatment crates can all be arranged in the line of traffic of animal flow.
Catching and restraining individual sheep/goats A group of sheep or goats can be herded into a collecting pen or enclosure from where individual animals can be caught. Approach an animal from the side and attempt to bribe it with some kind of feed and be fast to catch the horn, legs or neck. Get assistance to hold it firmly so that you can examine the head, the neck, eyes, and other parts of the body. Adult animals and big lambs/kids can be individually restrained by holding the skin under the chin and by holding the tail head on its rump. The easiest technique to hold a sheep or goat is in the following way:
• Grasp the animal by the neck or upper part of a back leg. • Put your right hand on its muzzle and turn its head slowly but firmly sideways. The animal will fall to the ground. Shift it into a sitting position with it leaning slightly against your legs keeping its feet off the ground. • The animal should now be relaxed and you can examine its udder or testes, collect various samples such as ticks, lice and other external parasites (maggots), take blood from the jugular or ear veins, trim its hooves, etc. There is an alternative way of handling a sheep/goat in a sitting position. First, reach under the belly and gently pull the two furthest legs towards you. With the animal on its side lean over to catch both front legs, and turn the body towards you so that it sits on its bottom, as in Figure 9.5, Step 3. To restrain a sheep or goat in a standing position, its head can be held in a loop of rope or strong string. The loop should be about 50 cm in circumference and tied to a tree or a post at the same height as the sheep’s shoulder. Tying a knot that does not slip but holds the loop at a fixed size prevents the animal from being strangled. Catching and restraining of sheep (rams) is easy when they have collars. Under these conditions, you can simply collect fecal samples directly from the rectum and other samples from different preferred sites. Animals can also be restrained in a standing position using a neck crush. The neck is trapped between two pieces of strong, upright planking.
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Step 4 Sheep and Goat Production Handbook for Ethiopia