Exciting news! Dechra now distributes Numnuts and NumOcaine, aligning with our product range dedicated to animal welfare. These solutions offer compassionate over-the-counter practical options for animal husbandry procedures and are readily available nationwide.

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Troubleshooting | Miss Injections into the Testes?

Wrinkly Skin & Creating Tension

A small number of producers occasionally report 'mis fires' when injecitng into the testes

Why is this happening?

When the ring is placed around the neck of the scrotum it bunches the wool, skin and internal tissues together, casusing the skin to wrinkle in the zone where the needle injects. Occasionally, the needle then injects into a skin fold rather than popping through the skin under the wool, and the NumOcaine is deposited outside the animal where it will have no effect.  

Wrinkly Skin
Wrinkly skin is difficult to inject into

How do I fix it?

  1. Create skin tension – this provides the needle with some tight, flat skin to pop through 
  2. Once the ring is in place, scoop the Numnuts applicator foward and lift slightly up
  3. Inject 

Still having issues? Try increasing the needle injection depth…

  • With a 2.5mm Alan Key loosen the two screws on the underside of the back mount (the area that holds the injector unit on)
  • Slide the injector unit forward
  • Tighten up the screws
  • Open the ‘jaws’ of your device
  • Check needle depth

Try optimising the scoop technique on a number of lambs 50-60 before increasing needle depth, as a longer needle is more likely to cause issues hitting the bone when using Numnuts with the tail. The optimum exposed needle length that works for most people is 12mm from the end of the needle slot in the centre metal pin.

The feedback we hearing is this that although rare is most often an issue with:

  1. Wrinkly Merinos
  2. Lambs that have a lot of wool around their testes
NumOcaine has a wide saftey margin, so if you do get the occasional misfire and see some numOcaine on the outside of the wool/scrotum it is ok to set up again, with more skin tension and the boys will thankyou for giving them give a second go with the anaesthetic  

Having issues injeciting into the tails?  Check out our tails docking trouble shooting help guide.

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