Jonathon, the others are right about the earliest you can tail & castrate lambs, but you don't have to do it then. You can do both at the same time, later on. I'd advise using the bands - I can go into all kinds of gory detail about how to do it with a knife, but the fact is the bands are cleaner and less chance of infection, and I would think less painful (numbness versus ....). These days I'd only use a knife if I found a ram that had missed being done young, and was too big for the bands.(posted 9008 days ago)I'd suggest if you're going to kill one of your ewes, you consider breeding them both first. This would give you the chance to look at the performance in the area you're keeping them for, then cull. What if one is barren, or drops malformed lambs, OR on the other hand maybe one has twins or better? The mutton would still be young and tender from the one you then culled (at say age two years or thirty months).