Why you need to cut tail of young sheep

D’amour Ntirenganya is an ardent Smart Harvest reader from Rwanda. I met him during a recent visit to Netherlands for an agricultural forum and we interacted briefly.

As we got acquainted, D’amour told me he keeps sheep. To keep the animals healthy, he has been cutting tails at an early stage.

A while back, he read one of my articles on tail cutting online and he wanted to seek more information on the benefits of this practice.

Out of curiosity, I asked him why he cuts the tails and he told me that for the females the practice makes mating easier. For males, the small tip he cuts off gives the ram a lower coil at the tail which fetches him more money in the market. For the sake of my Rwandese friend and other readers I will address this issue.

Cutting a portion of the sheep’s tail is called tail docking. It is an animal husbandry practice done for health, welfare and management reasons. In breeding females it eases mating just as D’amour said.

Unlike many other tailed animals that can lift their tails to give way for expulsion of faecal waste, sheep don’t have this ability.

Their tail is a fat bank that gets heavy with maturity. It is thus common for sheep to soil their hind quarters. This poses a hygiene issue initially that progresses to pose a health challenge.

Fly strike is a common and fatal condition in sheep caused by faecal waste accumulation around the anal area.

Research has shown a threefold reduction in fly strike in sheep with docked tails. Fly strike is a painful condition caused by blowflies which lay eggs in faecal waste that accumulate around the anal area.

Welfare of animal

The maggots of these flies burrow into the sheep body producing a poisonous secretion that cause wounds and systemic infections. This is easily predisposed by long uncut sheep tails. Tail docking reduces strike fly, improves external parasite control and increases reproductive capacity and stress tolerance.

Tail docking improves cleanliness of the wool and therefore improves its quality. It is recommended that this routine practice be done early in life — between two and twelve weeks of age.

Any tail docking done past this age should be for treatment purposes following injuries and must strictly be done by a veterinary surgeon.

It is critical to get the docked tail length right. The correct length should meet the health and welfare concerns of the animal.

In female sheep one should leave a tail stump with at most two vertebrae bones. The rule of thumb is that it should at least cover the vulva. Docking the whole tail is perhaps worse than not docking at all as it increases the risk of rectal prolapse and goes against the welfare of the animal.

Tail docking should be done at the vertebrae joint. The weather should be favourable to reduce contamination of the wound. Avoid dusty yards, muddy, wet or humid weather conditions when docking.

However in as much as tail docking enhances animal welfare; it can also become a welfare issue.

The process needs to be done at the appropriate time and using appropriate technique failure to which the animal can be exposed to unnecessary pain and post-surgical complications that can be life threatening.

Preventive measures like vaccination against tetanus should be done following tail docking to avoid lethal infections.

- The writer is the winner of Vet of the Year Award 2016 and works with the Kenya Tsetse and Trypanosomiasis Eradication Council –KENTTEC, [email protected])