Abstract
Artificial rearing of lambs is often complicated by the difficulty of training lambs to suck on artificial teats. In five experiments, 65 new-born lambs were presented with various artificial teats in order to identify teat characteristics which elicit spontaneous sucking. Soft teats elicited more sucking than firm ones, and teats about 4 cm in length elicited more sucking than shorter or longer models within the range 1–7 cm. The temperature of the teat, within the range 11–14°C, had negligible influence. Eight commercially-available teats differed greatly in the amount of sucking they elicited, but none elicited sucking as effectively as a very soft teat made from a rubber glove. Use of teats that do not readily elicit sucking may explain some of the difficulty in training artificially-reared lambs to suck.
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