The First 7 Days: What to Do After You Get Your Show Animal Home
You wrote the check. You loaded that lamb or goat and drove home with a kid who hasn't stopped talking about it since you left the sale. Now it's in the pen, looking at you, and you're wondering what comes next.
Episode 4 of the Drench Line podcast is built around this exact moment. Logan Newsom and Sam Silvers pick up right where Episode 3 left off — you've got a good one in the barn, you did the work to find it, now you have to keep it alive and get it started right. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Day 1: Get the Basics Right Before You Do Anything Else
The single biggest mistake new families make is skipping the basics to get straight to the "real" stuff. Before you run any protocol, before you think about halter breaking or leg work, your animal needs three things: feed, water, and hay — and it needs to find all three on its own.
These animals just got weaned, transported, and dropped into a new pen with new dirt, new smells, and no familiar faces. That stress load is real, and Logan makes the point that it's probably the starting point for most of the problems that show up in week one. An animal that's eating and drinking is already ahead of one that isn't, no matter what else you do.
Don't isolate it. Sam's first question to every buyer who picks up a single lamb from his place is whether they have any other animals at home. If they don't, he'll send a companion with them — usually a ewe lamb or a less competitive animal that can come back later. A lone animal in a new pen is stressed. Two animals together figure out their new environment faster and start eating sooner.
Day 1–2: The Vaccination Checklist
Once your animal is settled and eating, it's time to run your arrival protocol. Here's what Logan and Sam both do:
CD&T Booster
CD&T is the core vaccination for sheep and goats — it covers Clostridium perfringens types C and D, plus tetanus. Your breeder almost certainly gave a primary series and a booster before the sale. Give another booster when you get home. The bacteria that CD&T protects against can live in soil, which means new dirt equals new exposure. Logan's father-in-law called it every time: anytime you move them to new dirt, you give a booster.
CD&T is also one of the few things in this business where there's no middle ground. As Logan puts it, they're either fine or they're dead. It's cheap, it's fast, and there is no good reason to skip it.
Injectable Wormer
Hit them with a Dectomax or Ivomec injectable on arrival. This covers both internal and external parasites. Follow that up within a few days with an oral wormer — Safeguard, Valbazen, or Cydectin — to hit the internal load from a different angle. Alternate wormer classes monthly going forward. Resistance builds when you rely on one product, and show animals get dewormed more often than a typical production animal. Rotate.
Heel Mites
This one gets skipped more than it should. Sam puts Ivomec pour-on directly on the heels — not in a spray bottle, just applied by hand on the stand — for three or four consecutive days on arrival. Once you lose the hair around the heel and hoof line, getting it back is a real fight. Leg wool matters at the show, and heel mites are the quiet thing that starts the domino effect. Manage it early.
Nasal Vaccine
Logan's program has added a nasal respiratory vaccination, especially coming out of winter and into spring when temperature swings in the Texas Panhandle can be 40 degrees in a single day. Respiratory illness hits hard when animals are stressed and moving into new environments. Check with your vet about what's appropriate for your area — but don't ignore it, especially if you're buying in the spring or fall.
Antibiotics?
Both Logan and Sam hold off on prophylactic antibiotics unless they see something wrong. You've already given the CD&T, the injectable wormer, and possibly a nasal vaccine. That's a lot at once, and you're still watching the animal settle in. If ears go down or something looks off, jump on it. Otherwise, let them eat, watch, and wait.
Days 2–7: Gut Health, Cocci, and the Medicator Conversation
Coccidiosis is one of the most common and most underestimated problems in show lambs and goats. Most people picture bloody scours and a visibly sick animal. What Logan actually sees more often is what he calls low-grade cocci — the animal's eating, it's not scouring, everything looks okay, but it's just not thriving. It might look like it's slowly melting. Muscle isn't building. Condition drops. You call your breeder and say the sheep you paid good money for isn't doing anything, and the answer starts with: where are we on cocci protocol?
Sam's prevention foundation is rumensin in the feed. It's not labeled for sheep, he'll tell you that himself, but it can interrupt the coccidiosis life cycle at any stage — which is what makes it different from some of the other options that only hit cocci at a specific point. That's built into the feed program, not something you add separately.
If you're seeing a problem or you want to be proactive on arrival, Sam runs Corid or sulfadimethoxine through a Dosatron medicator. He describes the Dosatron as the best $300 he's spent in the barn — a 1:128 ratio medicator on the water line that lets him dose the whole pen without treating animals individually. When he's not running a medication through it, he's running Liquid Boost (BioZyme) for gut health and immunity. B vitamins, zinc, biotin — especially useful any time an animal is under stress, getting a shot, or coming off a medication. Logan runs Hydro Boost, the BioZyme concentrate, the same way and notes that animals seem to drink more when it's in the water. Draw your own conclusions on the trade secrets.
If you're not sure what's going on with an animal that isn't thriving, run a fecal sample. It doesn't cost much, it tells you what you're dealing with, and it's faster than guessing. Build a relationship with a local vet who works with small ruminants. That relationship pays off when you need a real answer fast.
Days 3–7: Halter Breaking
Sam calls halter breaking the time when the tears and cussing really come in. He's not wrong, but he also says it's not actually hard — it just takes consistency.
Chain halter, not rope. A rope halter can get cinched down tight enough to cause real problems if the animal fights it. A chain gives them feedback — enough tension that they register the pressure without risking injury.
Start at the fence. Tie them to the fence in their pen with their head up at a comfortable height. First few days, just let them get used to having something on their head while a kid sits with them. Sam's operation runs this for about a week before they ever try to lead them anywhere.
Walk them in the pen first. Before you head outside, walk them in circles in the pen. Get them used to following before they figure out they could bolt down the road.
Don't drag them. Logan tells his kids this constantly — stop pulling. Walk beside the animal, let it feel like its idea, and things click faster than you'd think. An animal you fight to the scales at a summer jackpot is almost always one that didn't get enough low-pressure groundwork early. Do the boring work now.
Start small and easy when they're light. At 60 or 70 pounds, a kid can manhandle a lamb through some resistance without anyone getting hurt. At 120 pounds in August, everyone's mad. The relationship between the exhibitor and the animal starts forming during halter breaking — make it a decent one.
One Thing That Doesn't Get Talked About Enough: Environment
You don't need an expensive setup to raise good show animals. Sam grew up fighting off rattlesnakes in the feed room. Logan knows families with eight grand champion trophies who ran three pens made out of Gebo's panels under a wooden lean-to. What matters is clean, adequate airflow in the summer, and the ability to keep them warm in the winter.
Sam sweeps and rakes pens down every Sunday. Logan runs shavings in a more closed barn because Panhandle winds would clear them out of an open setup. Your barn reflects your climate — both approaches work fine as long as the pen stays clean and the air moves.
Dirty, wet pens are where cocci thrives. Keep it clean.
The First Week Sets the Season
Episode 4 makes one thing clear: the first seven days are not the time to wing it. You spent months finding the right animal, probably more money than you planned, and now the pressure's on to not blow it before the show season even starts.
Get them eating and drinking. Give the CD&T and wormer. Address heel mites. Watch for respiratory issues. Keep the gut health program running. Start halter breaking slowly and don't skip steps. And understand that cocci can be quietly pulling on an animal that looks fine — don't wait for bloody scours to ask the question.
If you missed how Logan and Sam picked this animal out in the first place, go back and read The Drench Line Guide to Buying a Show Sheep: From Your First Question to Signing the Check and Have a Plan: How to Select Your First Show Animal and Survive Your First Live Sale. Episode 4 builds directly on both of those.
Got questions about your arrival protocol? Submit them here or follow Logan at Newsom Livestock and Sam at Silvers Livestock for what's happening in their barns right now.
