[Old Shep]

Not a good start to the weekend, I turned up at son's land to meet him only to be greeted by a very dead sheep by the pens.  Pool of blood from its mouth and pink mousse like stuff from its nose.  It had been fine the night before.  It was not an old sheep, in seemingly very good condition, and looked as if it was having twins - due next week - bloomin' shame    Enquries with the vets led to a probably diagnosis of pastuerella.  Anyone else had experience of this?  When asked what to look out for in the rest of the flock vet replied - sudden death!! Also not to handle them if possible, move them or stress them out.  To our knowledge nothing stressful had happened to this sheep 

Any way the day got better when our first lambs arrived - a shearing at my place gave birth to triplets! (with a little assistance from me  )  All doing fine - left them with mum for the time being as she has a bag like a cow!  Apart from the first night when I milked her out and bottle fed them, they are all suckling on their own and have lovely fat tummies   

 

[suziequeue]

Our best ewe had pasturella last year - shortly after lambing I htink.... we noticed noisy breathing at feeding time and called the vet.

He said another few hours and she would have been a gonner so it is very quick.

Thanks for reminding me to warn hubby to look out for same this year as we had them in yesterday for their pre-lambing imms and drench.

[SallyintNorth]

Sorry to hear about your son's dead sheep 

I had this - sudden death, sometimes with and sometimes without blood from the nose - in my ewes when I first took over the moorland farm.  We also had a frighteningly high number of ewes collapsing, mostly surviving after treatment for metabolic disturbances.  By the second year, we had got into the swing of the place, the routine meds etc, and the 500+ sheep were used to us, and we didn't get so many of these cases.  The odd one, and the odd one with metabolic disturbances (twin lamb diseases / hypocalcaemia) but not several dead sheep with no explanation.

So I can't tell you exactly what made the difference, but certainly the sheep were less stressed simply because they knew us and our dogs. 

The whole flock was up-to-date with their vaccinations (which being Heptavac-P included pasteurella) when we took them on, and we continued their regime, so I am pretty sure it wasn't pasteurella with us.

The things we did that we maybe did better the second time, and may or may not have contributed, include:

• caking twin and triplet bearing ewes from 8 weeks before lambing, and all pregnant shearlings
• mineral drenching all ewes before tupping and midway through pregnancy
• ad lib Crystallyx high energy sheep buckets (red) from early in pregnancy
• twice (or more) daily checks, keep an hourly eye on any ewe that was lethargic and prompt action with subcutaneous calcium if she went down
• fluke drench (it was a very flukey area) every 6 weeks from October to March
• ensuring plenty of forage from midwinter on, and spread about enough for all ewes to be able to get at it (and the same with the cake)
• keeping our Mules seperate from our (horned) Swaledales

They also got copper mid-pregnancy, and vaccinations a couple of weeks before lambing. 

One of the massive surprises for us - and my farming partner was very experienced, with 25+ years' experience of sheep farming - was just how little of a difference in what the ewes expected would cause them sufficient stress to collapse when pregnant.  It actually made me feel terrible about all the times I had taken my very well-behaved dogs off-lead but under close control through flocks in autumn and winter, thinking that farmers over-reacted in insisting all dogs near sheep had to be on a lead. 

[Old Shep]

Thanks Sally for your really good reply, and Susie q.
Mum always Heptovac-P'd and we have kept this up.  They are very used to Ben as he has had them for a year now and worked every weekend with Mum for well over 10 years (since a boy).  We can't work out what has caused this but are watching (and listening to) the others like a hawk. Going down your list Sally, we seem to have covered all that except the copper because they're texels. I'm wondering if one of the others gave her a butting at the feed troughs, they are getting rambunctious.  It's also extremely hot here for March (22 degrees today) and wondered if that stressed her.  We'll probably never know.

[Remy]

Sorry to hear of your sheep  .  I've lost three this year, two I knew were due to worms but the third, a Herdwick, my hubby found dead in the field after it had been absolutely fine the day before.  I had it PMd and the provisional diagnosis was pasteurella; it had haemorraging in the heart and liver and also septicaemia.  It's worm count was low.  However further tests revealed a very toxic copper content, and my vet said this must have been due to supplementary feeding prior to when I got it.  I am very careful what I feed the sheep so I know it's not anything I'd given her.

I had wondered if it was something to do with pregnancy as the two Herdwicks were supposed to be in lamb when I got them, but there were no lambs inside her.  However the other one is bagging up nicely!

I don't have plans to buy any more sheep in now as my problems were with all those I'd bought in from various sources, and the Herdwicks were extremely flighty sheep so more prone to stress I suppose - although it doesn't seem this was the cause of death?  There are so many potential life threatening conditions with sheep, I even worry when giving them routine jabs, especially with the very nervous ones!