Teaser and MOT time for the lads!

• Did your tup do his job last year?
• Is your bull reliable for another calving?
• Looking to synchronise your ewes with teaser tups?

Now is the time to be thinking about teaser tups and giving your bulls and tups an MOT.

Bull and tup fertility tests

It is important to make sure your bulls and tups are firing on all cylinders in plenty of time before they go in, this will allow you to have a back up plan should anything not be quite right.

Bull and tup fertility tests can be done by a vet on farm, providing you have safe handling facilities. A vet will check the general health of the animal, the external genitalia and collect a semen sample to check the health of the sperm.

Fertility testing is particularly useful if you feel you have had more of the following;

• More barren animals than expected this year.
• Older bulls / tups.
• New bulls / tups.

Teaser tups

A teaser is a tup that has been vasectomized, used to create a compact lambing period, bringing ewes into season around the same time.

A vasectomy is an operation to partly remove the vas deferens to stop the pathway of sperm. The teaser will still have testosterone therefore have the same behaviour as an intact ram without being able to get the ewes in lamb.

Teaser tups need to have the snip at least 6 weeks prior to use to ensure they don’t get any ewes in lamb.

The teasers should be kept well away from the ewes (out of sight and smell), until they are ready to be used, and put in with the ewes two weeks before the intact rams are introduced.

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