LambKIND – it’s about time

Adopting kinder castration – can you be serious ?

Joining the NFUS, the Welsh Farmers Union have joined the conversation in an effort to get Parliament to finally rule on change. But 62 years ago Parliament was already discussing it !

Back then, as in 2008 when FAWC (Farm Animal Welfare Council) demanded action by Government, there were no simple, practical solutions. Now there are 2, ClipFitter and Numnuts, and they have been available for several years !

Both systems should be legalised NOW say the renamed AWC, who offer up another plea to Government to change the law to enforce pain relief. If this tired message wasn’t hugely sad for lambs, it could be this year’s April fool. We have funded our development completely ourselves, and although Numnuts have had support from the Australians., it’s not impossible that we may have both have wasted our money trying to help UK Farmers avoid a complete ban and that nothing can be done to avoid it.

Legal but unviable

What people need to remember is that by legalising Clips or Drugs it doesn’t automatically mean they are viable, and therefore available. Scotland permitted ClipFitter in March 2022 – 2 years ago – and at the start of April 2 years later we have almost no orders. It has cost us hundreds of thousands of personal pounds to reach this point, and unfortunately that cannot continue for ever. Cheers from the back-benches I hear, from Farmers and Organisations that think the welfare lobby will go away if they ignore it (as it has done for decades). Soon there may be no practical and permanent solution like ClipFitter to the pain suffered by lambs – possibly not even a useful short-term fix from drugs using Numnuts. We will have to wait and see whether, this time, it will be the real thing, or a permanent ban on castration and tailing like so many other European Countries ? Your guess is as good as mine – but my guess six years ago that the market was serious at last, may not have been correct after all ?

RULES ON RUBBER RINGS COMING DOWN THE LINE

This is a very practical article in The Scottish Farmer magazine by Editor John Sleigh, interviewing Penny Middleton NFU Scotland Policy Director, discussing the future in the UK of castration/tailing methods, and concluding “If the AWC report’s recommendations were fully implemented, it would effectively prohibit the use of rubber bands, without anaesthesia and pain relief, at any age. Legislation may permit producers to use devices like ClipFitter because they result in significantly less pain.”

Chicken or Egg ?

For the maximum number of people to benefit from ClipFitter, we need to make it accessibly economic, and attractively sustainable – a fancy way of saying ‘cheap & cheerful’ !

Economy comes from volume – hence the chicken and egg subject line – and sustainable means clips which are not made from petrochemicals, and very definitely naturally biodegradable.

This is actually what we hope to to offer next season for MiniClips at very least. All we need to make it happen is support, both verbally (standards setters openly recognising the science) and financially (a committed market). What was so exciting about the scientific results from SRUC, was the effect fitting clips (not rings) has on the very young. It’s probably the toughest application for Clips, but if you have the patience to learn how best to do it, lambs will benefit enormously, and thrive without being checked.

UK RED TRACTOR and OTHER STANDARDS

Interestingly, these Red Tractor standards published in 2020 mention Clamping as an acceptable method of castration. and tailing of older lambs in England. However, tailing needs to be carried out with anaesthetic (despite the fact that our trial results show that our version of the clamp adequately substitutes for not only anaesthetic but analgesic too). Castration is permitted to 3 months without anaesthetic using a clamp or other unspecified bloodless device. It would be good to see these standards updated to remove the need for anaesthetic when tailing – once Red Tractor really believe fully in the science.

We need to point out that Farmers should be aware that a tiny amount of small print within the law actually undermines the spirit of pain limitation by promoting the belief that any method that cuts of blood supply must be painful – ClipFitter is NOT like a rubber ring but almost identical to a Burdizzo although quicker, easier and much more reliable. As the AWC recommend, the Law needs to be updated.

The Influencers

Influential people are aware of ClipFitter’s unrivalled performance & who may able to drive progress in 2024

Research scientists, Government Ministers, Leaders of Welfare Groups from round the world, and our UK National Sheep Association are all discussing and driving the progress of Pain Mitigation for Lambs (and potentially calves). Fitting Clips without, or Rings with drugs may be routine one day.

We are delighted to be picked out by such eminent people as a possible, not to say probable contributor to a better life for lambkind in the future.

Wales join Scotland a few weeks later, in releasing the AWC Opinion docs and SRUC Data.

The Scottish Government have revealed the most recent science from SRUC and considered opinions of DEFRA’s Animal Welfare Committee, on the implications of castrating or tailing lambs in the UK. Read and use it as you will, but at least the industry now knows there is a better choice than Rubber Rings – (introduced the year I was born – 1946 !) 2028 now looks like their ‘best by’ date – hopefully not mine…. or is that tempting fate? Watch this space !

However, on a lighter note, and for a quick overview of our new castration and tailing system have a look at www.clipfitter.co.uk. If you would simply like to see how ClipFitter works in practice please take a look at our YouTube channel. Otherwise, for our news go to our blog, and for views, please read on.

Our learning curve became steeper as early adopters fed back their experiences using ClipFitter this 2023 UK lambing season. The “bigger the better” has been a clear message. Lambs grow bigger faster with balls, and farmers can leave legal castration to a time when the best tups are obvious and market prices are at their best. Our biggest clip design too – MAXI – performed best of all, with the extra length that ensures ‘clear’ space to lock tight beyond flattened skin (and wool).

We surveyed 2023 users with these encouraging results, much of the success due to the arrival of our v2 redesigned clip along with the larger size.

Losing clips is a risk of any clip fixing design if overpacked. So, if in doubt, using a size larger than you think is our best advice. Version 2 Clip design, with two distinct parts in the form of double male and double female offers real and improved security. Delivered ‘as one’ they have been easier to load.

Plant based Clips arrive for trial

Fossil fuel free raw materials are the perfect answer to sustainability. Single use plastics such as coffee machine capsules and disposable cutlery are moving over to Solinatra (“only natural”) from traditional plastics. They are as rigid as we need for clips, and will completely degrade without an industrial composting environment. Our desire to save the planet ‘quickly’ with water soluble raw materials was, we now realise, over-ambitious, and produced castrated lambs that still had their scrotums in tact. I know that sounds ideal (like a burdizzo treatment) but with our single and full scrotum crush approach, is a risk not worth taking. The presence of moisture is also too variable around the world, but the existence of UV and ‘bugs’ is guaranteed!

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Product Design work almost done? Unlikely ! …

Friend of Jamie Leslie using maxi bio on lambs that should probably have been done a week earlier !

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Clip Fitting in 2023

Our first commercial season was exciting as we waited to see how farmers got on ‘at arms length’. In previous seasons we have usually accompanied orders and taken part in the learning curve – and there IS a learning curve (like anything new). Thanks to the attitude of all our early adopters we have all benefitted and ClipFitter will certainly develop onwards and upwards as a result. From Orkney to South Ayrshire, and across the borders to England and Wales at appropriate ages, Clips are demonstrating unarguably behavioural benefits. If fitting clips to tails is easy, fitting clips around the scrotum is not always and sometimes requires a patient learning period; although positioning is identical to ringing.

Tail docking with ClipFitter has proved easy and beneficial this 2023 lambing season – whatever the Clip or Lamb size. The process of removing that part of the tail that would collect fly-attracting faeces is much quicker (2/3rds of the time taken by a ring) and more defined. Applying the clip between vertebrae is clearly preferable of course, but not vital. Any reaction is very short lived as nerves are disabled ‘on application’; with no needles or drugs.

mini ClipFitter is ready to despatch in small quantities now (end March 2023). Forward orders were very slow in appearing so we haven’t invested in high production tooling that is ready to roll at this time. Instead, we are moulding them ourselves and currently providing only bio-accelerated clips, and not our water-soluble version. The extreme cold of the last month has given us a wake-up call as clips broke on application ! The soluble clips are so keen to change ‘state’ that moisture, in particular humidity (or lack of it) and temperature can end up affecting their ability to work.

We do hope to supply a proportion of soluble along with our normal plastic clips so that everyone can at least experience them.

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For the up to date science on new methods of castration, please watch this you tube video from SRUC

MiniClips v Rings – 2023

We have delivered (28/2/23) our first batch of Mini (watersoluble with no micro plastic residue) Clips to a local Borders farmer and watched him start to use them. The results are as shockingly convincing as ever. The Lamb on the left has 2 Clips, and on the right (lying down) has 2 Rings, Fitting them is similar but different. The trick is to learn to use your fingers like a ringing plier to push down on the tummy to pop the balls up, then grab them and lift them up to slide the slimline MiniFitter jaws below your finger tips. Easy with practice and so worthwhile ! The ‘clipped’ lamb behaved as if nothing had happened; the ringed lamb, after 10 minutes, was ‘destroyed’ and sad to watch. Whether you think that level of suffering is worth the extra cost or not, is up to you.

Clips have added benefits – a rapid return to normality is one of them

Beyond the huge pain mitigation effect of Clips (see the chart later in this section), there are other interesting benefits for those that believe a rapid, healthy and full recovery leads to a more valuable lamb. Take the speed with which tails and scrotum are shed as an instance – and consider that the sooner dying flesh is shed, the quicker normal behaviour can resume. Happily, the results of our SRUC 2022 Trial show that Clips can remove all your lambs tails or scrotums almost in every case before Rings even begin to do the same !

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2008 – 2023 a 15 year wait

For manufacturers like us, with a seasonal market for our products, winter is a time to prepare for what is to come; we are not much different to farmers in that sense. However, farming provides a reliable (not everyone will agree) prospect provided the health of your flock is unaffected by external events. Bird Flu actually affected our game farming product business (for bitting tools) last year, and will no doubt continue to do so this coming season. That business has amazingly remained constant for 30 years- so it’s, sort of, about time !

Disrupting the farming world with a new method of castrating and tailing is another type of challenge. Like the numnuts team we took up a long standing challenge laid down by the Animal welfare Lobby though DEFRA, to provide a far less distressing way of accomplishing a task unchanged since I was born – in 1946 ! FAWC produced their last report demanding action in 2008 and only now is something being done about it – in 2023 – a 15 year wait.

We have without a doubt, using Prof Vince Molony’s novel invention, produced a system that answers the call – and now the challenge is to make it in volume and deliver in time for the 2023 lambing season. The question is what volume ? Unless farmers who want or need to move away from illegal ringing to something which, in Scotland is allowed to 3 months, they will have to let us know 3 months in advance. Guaranteed delivery is now, as I write this, into April.

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AgriScot22

My brother Peter and I have probably never experienced such an intense day of interest from … everyone, and not just farmers. Thanks to Niall Bowser Livestock Equipment we were able to exhibit ClipFitter in advance of what will be our first commercial season in 2023.

Agri-Expo Carlisle (28th October 2022)

It’s always a surprise how many ‘strangers’ are interested in welfare and in our simple mechanical solution to the avoidable pain suffered by Lambs during castration & tailing at all ages. However everyone is amazed by our unlikely and unexpected lambkinder approach; but as soon as they use and feel the ClipFitter working on our crash-test-dummy-lamb they know it will work and reminds most of the burdizzo action that it replicates.

Key lessons learned from Agri-Expo include 1. Unit Cost will be very important 2. Our development of a dissolvable clip is crucial to success 3. DEFRA need to act quickly to give farmer clarity in England & Wales on what will be permitted next lambing season; there is definitely a hunger for progress and everyone knows castration and tail-docking is high on the ‘agenda’ and Scotland has already decided 4. While everyone knows lambs suffer, very few really understand the real extent of the pain suffered. Our scientific proof needs to be made available widely – it opened eyes at Agri-Expo – especially the very young lamb pain behaviour data!

The ClipFitter project

Work on our ClipFitter/ClampEasy project has occupied our time for almost 5 years now. We should really have made more progress in that amount of time. Notwithstanding the Covid interruption, it’s been very hard to find farm volunteers in what is always an annual rush at lambing or marking time. Constant and very appreciated encouragement, on the other hand, has come from Phil Stocker of The National Sheep Association and Andrew Voas of The Scottish Government.

In the meantime we ALL await the decisions of DEFRA, advised by AWC and others. Our and Numnut’s SRUC scientific trial results go to DEFRA at the end of September 2022 and they will inform that decision. If their ruling, as as some appear to expect, a complete ban on castration and tailing then our work is effectively done. Our own personal input to that discussion has been a meeting with AWC in 2021 and many other stakeholders will have had a say too. Inevitably the status quo will not continue. We can only hope for a period in which lambs’ best welfare comes first.

Developing a repeatable applicator too has been a greater engineering challenge than anticipated. Because of the similarity to a Burdizzo we need reliable accuracy and power, and have ranged in our development work from electronically controlled hydraulics to simply mechanical tool designs.

The key to our continuing effort is that we believe in the ‘novel clip’ invention – it works in practice – we and all our volunteer famers have seen it with our eyes every time we use it. Andrew Voas described our system in a similarly novel way … “the method of castration and tailing you have devised is ‘previously unforeseen’ in terms of current recommendations offered to farmers“.

So please read on with an open mind – you will not have seen anything like it before ! (Please note the information is in reverse order with the most recent experiences first).

If you would like to help promote the use of our system in England, please go to this DEFRA page while it’s relevant. Grant support for the introduction of a system which will inevitably be more expensive would make all the difference to farmers and lambs.

You can order our versatile lamb cradle on line. Press the advert to find out more.

Showtime Summer 2022

Former MSP Jim Hume appreciated my suitable jacket decoration as I walked around the Royal Highland Show in 2022 !

As we take our product to the market publicly for the first time, our first show, The Royal Highland was very kindly shared with Niall Bowser who successfully linked the use of clips with his wonderful sheep handling equipment. Niall has continued to represent us at shows later this season, mainly in the North of Scotland.

The Royal Welsh Show was 4 days with our own stand – and highly successful. Welsh Farmers were fascinated with the possibilities for later castration. We were asked so often about the use of our largest clips on Calves too – so we need to explore that market – and a surprising number of Welsh Farmers are actually no longer castrating (an animal welfare dream). This seems to be related to the market demand of Muslim buyers in particular. Finally we were honoured to win First Prize for Innovation (Trade) at the NSA Sheep 2022 Event in Malvern ! We were interrogated by the judges very thoroughly and apparently passed that exam, thankfully ! It was a pleasure to meet Victoria Prentis too – DEFRA Minister – and she seemed intrigued by our system and in particular the water-soluble version of our clip ! It was a crowd pleaser in general !

ClipFitter Field Experiences 2022

We are having such an interesting May & June (’22)! Thanks to ScotGov‘s faith in us we have ben able to entice volunteers to use ClipFitter in their own situations, and without having to look over their shoulders for disapproving authority. In fact 10% of those who opened our email-shot (to the Scottish Borders only) wanted to come on board. You can read a summary of a few of our farmer sessions here.

I have to say that whilst showing off our product, we have learned a huge amount in the process too. Starting with a failure (in terms of apparent lack of access to the lambs) on an NZ chute system, which we them mastered elsewhere with effort and teamwork (wouldn’t it be nice to turn the clock back!).

Manual handling of lambs at marking too, involves habits revolving around ringing, most of which apply to clip-fitting, although the approach is different. Each farmer has to work it out for himself – and even choose the weapon of his choice (we have two versions of ClipFitter and may need more). We are still working with farmers to find the optimum way – here is one who found our double-handle Fitter much easier than the single.

So … with June and even July opportunities still ahead, at this stage … a) everyone notices the lamb-clip effect on behaviour. It is as natural as it could be and so very different to the distress seen with rings and b) fitting clips is probably becoming as fast as rings as farmers optimise the process themselves. c) Clip Fitting needs the right attitude (and patience) to change those habits of a lifetime. You need to want it to work either because of the guilt of being illegal or because you want to make the lambs lives better and allow them to recover and thrive rapidly after a marking-time set-back.

Our thanks to Andrew Voas and Scot Gov.

Lamb Clipping Cradle

Our Lamb Cradle or Hammock is designed to be light enough to move between lambing pens and hang. We find it very useful for fitting LambClips with the lamb’s back legs locked and spread to give broad access to tails and sacks. The soft, washable base is spring loaded as is the swinging arm so a wide range of lamb sizes will fit. We can brand the base for re-sellers of course – it’s a mini banner ! Please contact us or Niall Bowser for more information.

Lamb Cradle – light and mobile – hooks onto hurdles and hangs. Suitable for large range of lamb sizes because of double sided spring loading .

Lamb Cradle is particularly useful with our ClipFitter system, but has much wider uses for those attempting to work single handed.

Clip-Fitter with “double-decker” handles

Lamb cradle calms the lamb and lets you fit clips accurately and undisturbed

ScotGov & Dishwasher tablets – March 2022

So what have they got in common ? For us, a great deal, because the very recent statement (*) from ScotGov’s Veterinary Head of Animal Welfare, Andrew Voas, giving the nod of approval for our system as a castration and tailing tool for lambs to 3 months of age, has given us the impetus to move the project onwards at some pace. But a potential stumbling block to any reasonable progress is the plastic that we will choose for LambClips.

PVOH (**) is possibly the only material available that will genuinely bio-degrade. In fact it is water soluble – like a dishwasher capsule ! So this is our first port of call when searching for an acceptable raw material – and you can see the dishwasher clip here already !

Biodegradable LambClips !

*”After looking into the legal definitions the Scottish Government view is that it is permissible to use Clampeasy for castration of lambs up to 3 months old without anaesthetic in Scotland under the Protection of Animals (Anaesthetics) Act 1954“

**

Early Lambs

We were lucky enough to meet Andrew Lamb, Foulden, Berwickshire, and use ClipFitter on many of his early and young (<7 day old) poll-dorset lambs born in January 2022.

Less than 7 Day Old Lambs benefitting from Lambclips

Andrew chose to use our simple lightweight pliers and took to clip-fitting like a duck to water. It re-enforced our view that farmers are the best people to use our tools – not us ! Tails have been discarded in 10 days or less and sacks are likely to come off in around 21 days. The advantage of fitting lambclips for young poll Dorset lambs would appear, from Andrew’s experience, to be the vastly improved castration discomfort.

Andrew is using ClipFitter for the first time !

Baby Lamb Clip

….now not much bigger than an umbilical cord clamp for human babies ! We are starting to adapt the size of our lambclips to suit the age and breed of lamb. Costs will come down too. Call +44 (0)1750 700029 to find out more.

In the days or weeks following birth, farmers will shorten tails (long tails can gather excretia) to limit fly strike (maggots), and castrate males to allow all growing lambs to run together without the concern of in-breeding.

FAWC – Farm Animal Welfare Council – demanded in a paper published in 2008 that steps should be taken (urgently then !) to improve the welfare of lambs undergoing this kind of painful and invasive treatment – at any stage of their lives. Whilst avoiding it entirely sounds like the easiest or at least ideal answer it is the health and management issue which takes priority for farmers trying to make a living.

The latest version of FAWC – simply called AWC – is at last hard on the trail of an answer to the challenge laid down in 2008. They are surveying the industry as a whole on the subject, and interviewing those of us that are proposing solutions.

So, what are we doing about it – after 40 years in farming product design and manufacture, which followed 10 years in the Textile Industry ?

Actually ClampEasy is kind of related ! It’s basically an Applicator and a Clip – just like so many of our products of the past. The difference is that the way we are applying the Clip is aimed at ‘pinching’ all the vital conduits that transfer pain, sperm, and blood supply – disabling them, swiftly and kindly. Ear tags were designed not to pinch !

Ring or Clip ?

The ring looks harmless but the clip is much kinder !

Our rubbery-moulding represents the testicles and you can see the various lifelines – nerves and sperm cords in particular. Nerves lines lead to the brain, and sperm-cords lead to… babies !

The traditional elastic ring squeezes hard until the blood stops flowing and the nerve stops communicating with the brain; then everything dies beyond this, and eventually falls off. That whole process lasts 3 weeks but the nerve itself takes 2 or 3 hours to die and stop talking to the brain – even longer according to some research. During that time the lamb is in pain.

Our new Clip system applied with a special tool called ClampEasy stops the nerve communicating as soon as it’s applied so the lamb feels no pain thereafter – forever – and has been treated in that instant. No drugs or chemicals – but a good mechanical tool with a simple but effective result; not dulling, but eliminating the the pain totally.

We refer to it as the FIT-Clip …. pain relief that is forever, instant and total.

The transformation in behaviour is amazing and every farm we have used it with has noticed a huge improvement in animal welfare.

The following video clip shows the noticeable and useful benefits of a rapid recovery from marking. Hamish Waugh had never experienced this level of normality before, and was able to return his lambs and ewes to pasture as soon as the last one was marked. From the moment they were tailed and castrated they were ready.

The good news is that, with the arrival of ClampEasy, there will be now two alternative practical treatments for lambs that avoid pain at Tailing and Castration. So the choice could become FitClip or Numnuts – both delivering pain relief with certainty.

Numnuts, and I am sure you must have heard about it, have been developing a ringing tool that dispenses anaesthetic, for more than 10 years years now, and are well ahead of ClampEasy in terms of broad farm usage and feedback. Numnuts have treated more than 1,000,000 ‘volunteered’ lambs now, probably nearer 2,000,000 as time marches on and their system certainly contributes hugely to the challenge of marking-time distress.

ClampEasy will undoubtedly benefit from greater farm use too, as farmers work out new handling and application techniques making the process more efficient. If you would like to try it and contribute to it’s development, then please call me (Brian Eadie) on +44 (0)1750 700029

Keep your eyes on our blog page. Whilst it covers all our activities, it majors on our Lamb welfare activities. We also have a YouTube channel where you can see videos of our use and development ClampEasy on YouTube

Hopefully with two options available eventually in the UK, famers may begin to make the choice themselves – after all, for many of them – hill farmers in particular – it would mean becoming a great deal more legal, apart from the pleasure of eliminating a few hours of unnecessary suffering. Maybe DEFRA too will get behind a welfare improvement, with a strengthening of legislation; the Animal welfare Council (AWC) have a remit to advise government on unnecessary or unnecessarily painful treatments to lambs. After all it was in 2008 that their predecessors FAWC requested a change.

Our :clampeasy~ applicator is coming along nicely and will be in production as soon as someone in authority tells us we are good to go. Production can be increased any time because of the long term partners we have in industry.