I spent Mother’s Day castrating four ram lambs twice. I knew when I finished the job the first time, that I wasn’t certain enough to know if I’d been successful. Last year the job was handled by our fourth-year-in-veterinarian-school daughter who is more familiar with the moving parts. This year it was our task and I knew I had done it wrong. While surgery is an option, for farmers the more common practice is to secure a tight rubber band around the scrotum and, like the tails we docked over a week ago, the scrotum will atrophy and fall off. We castrate our rams for two reasons – one, we want to be able to keep these lambs on the west field with their mothers and siblings because it is our largest field and can support a large flock. And two, we only need one active ram to service the girls.
All the lambs are wicked fast and impossible to catch so to get our hands on them we had the full flock head into the chute that connects the barnyard to the west field. Once in the chute, Todd and I walked side by side holding wooden panels to pin the flock into a really small area inside the chute. This prevents them from running and scrambling and makes it much easier to get your hands on them, including the ram lambs.
I’ve docked lambs’ tails with the elastrator, a pliers with four bent prongs at the tip that can stretch a small firm rubber band. Today I would use it to begin the castration process. The challenge is that not only do you need to get the rubber band over the scrotum, you need to have the testicles in the scrotum, too.
Standing in the pen we had just created, surrounded by about 15 jostling sheep, Todd scooped up a ram lamb and I put the rubber band over the prongs of the pliers. The scrotum was the size of a ripe fig and easy to pull through the stretched out rubber band, but the testicles were like small marbles gliding and slipping inside the sack and up and out of the sack. With my left hand I tried to find both and pinch them down into the scrotum before closing the pliers and securing the rubber band around the base of the scrotum. I was anxious, the lamb was kicking, Todd was holding him high, but gravity was working against me. I wasn’t sure which side of the rubber band the testicles were on when I was done and the rubber band had contracted and was gripped in its place at the top of the scrotum. In the book, it seemed like it didn’t matter where the balls were because if the testacles were in the body cavity instead of the scrotum, they’d never produce sperm because testicles would be too warm. I thought, “I’ll do better on the next one.” We moved on. Lambs kicked, Todd held them high, mothers and lambs baa’ed, I tried not to rush. In ten minutes we had secured rubber bands on all four rams and then released the full flock into the west field.
Later in the morning, Dr. Kate called to wish me happy Mother’s Day and I told her about the morning chore and my uncertainty. She agreed that it wouldn’t matter what side the testicles were on in order to have an infertile ram, but if the testicles were on the inside, the ram would still produce testosterone. Now I was muddled. Did this matter? I decided that what mattered is that I didn’t know what I had been doing. I left the final outcome to chance. And the right thing to do was to do it all over again.
In the early evening we reversed our actions and brought the flock up from the field, into the chute and pinned them in again with the wooden panels. However, this time we let most of the sheep in the barn yard. I had with me my sharpest small sewing scissors and very slowly clipped at the hard rubber band until it popped apart. I massaged the scrotum looking for testicles and pressed up into the body in search of the two spheres. I naively thought I could hold the testicles in place in the scrotum with yarn tied into a slip knot giving me more time and assurance that the rubber band would be in the right place. That quickly became a ridiculous solution. What I needed to do was wiggle both small balls down in the scrotum, gentle pinch the very top of the scrotum and slide the extended rubber band high up against the body to make certain it would close above the two testicles. With Todd holding lambs steady, I cut away the morning’s rubber band, probed, found and secured two balls in the scrotum and released a fresh rubber band on all four rams. My poor handling in the morning caused these rams more pain than was necessary, but I believe I now know what has to be done and next year I will do better.
As we walked out of the barn yard, all four ram lambs were lying on the ground, clearly confused and dazed by this new pain. By contrast, after the morning’s attempt, they hardly seemed to notice. Todd said, “That’s a pretty sure sign you got it right this time.”
Peggy