Author Topic: Ewes with runny and closing eyes (Read 3568 times)

Jon Feather · « **on:** November 26, 2015, 09:59:20 am »

Lost a gimmer at the weekend. Yesterday noticed that another gimmer wasn't looking as bright eyed (all the others looks ok).
This morning 3 ewes and 3 gimmers have runny eyes and 1 eye almost closed: that's half our flock affected. One of the ewes eyes look cloudy.

Worried now.

Will be phoning the vet in a minute but would also welcome your opinions.

ladyK · « **Reply #1 on:** November 26, 2015, 10:30:58 am »

Runny, squinty, cloudy eyes affecting several sheep in the flock sounds like an outbreak of pink eye to me. I'm battling with it in my flock at the moment. Horrible and persistent!
I'm not aware this kills sheep though so maybe the death was a separate issue. But given this background I'd have the vet out ASAP.

Marches Farmer · « **Reply #2 on:** November 26, 2015, 10:50:17 am »

Me too. There could be more than pink eye ging on.

Anke · « **Reply #3 on:** November 26, 2015, 12:01:20 pm »

Bloody hell, you are having a rough start to keeping sheep.... but sounds like pink eye.

Jon Feather · « **Reply #4 on:** November 26, 2015, 12:28:16 pm »

Spoken to a couple of local farmer who say New Forest or pink eye. Off to the vets after lunch. In the meantime here a couple of photos I took. We have 4 others similar to the black ewe and, thankfully, only one with an eye that has gone opaque.

Jon Feather · « **Reply #5 on:** November 26, 2015, 03:26:46 pm »

Vet said to take photos to show them. Diagnosed pink eye. 3 x 3gm tubes = £20

Blood hell. 'scuse my french.

Jon Feather · « **Reply #6 on:** December 08, 2015, 04:46:36 pm »

Quick update. It was Pink Eye as you would all have known: me too now (how quick you learn!).
The situation rapidly spread from the initial couple of sheep to most of them.
So we hit it hard with Orbenin cream: as much as we could get in the affected eyes (vet said don't treat good eyes. Still not sure if I agree with this) and retreated 2 days later. At this point they seemed to be getting worse but I expected this after reading about the condition. Since then we have retreated ever few days and we are back to one gimmer with a glassy eye, one gimmer about 90% recovered and a ewe about 75% recovered.
On the whole I am very pleased (and surprised) with the recovery.
Just wanted to let you know what we did and what results we got. Maybe it will help someone else. And a big thank you to everyone who responded to my post and the other Pink Eye thread still running.
http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/index.php?topic=70535.0

waterbuffalofarmer · « **Reply #7 on:** December 08, 2015, 09:45:48 pm »

I hope all turns out well, you're doing a really good job keep up the good work and keep us updated?

VSS · « **Reply #8 on:** December 15, 2015, 06:16:33 pm »

Best thing we've found for eye infections is Teramycin spray - the blue stuff you get from the vet.

Sounds horrible, but yes, you can spray it straight into the eye, just a little squirt, and it works pretty quickly.