The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: quintasheepies on April 10, 2021, 08:24:02 pm
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Hello,
It’s my first post on here!
I am on a quinta in central Portugal.
Our ewe has successfully given birth to twins, around 20 hours ago. They have bonded well and she is attentive.
Our concern is they are both feeding from the same teat, and the unused one is hug and swollen.
One lamb seems slightly stronger than the other; more veracious and a stronger feeder.
We have milked the massive udder and tried bottle feed both lambs, although both seem uninterested.
In an attempt to encourage use of the huge swollen udder we wiped some milk from the used/working udder on in, but still nothing. The lambs just don’t seem to recognise it’s where milk come from!
We have also put the lamb to the test and squirted milk into its mouth, but they still don’t feed, and favour the other smaller/used teat.
What is the best thing to do?
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The "cow teat" will reduce to normal size if the milk is taken, but you will probably have to milk some milk off by hand a few times a day for a day or two, until the teat is less engorged, and then each time when you've made the teat smaller, get one of the lambs onto that teat if you can. The sooner they start using both teats, the sooner the big one will stop getting so engorged.
By the sound of it, they are both managing to get plenty from the other teat at the moment, so are not hungry enough to take a bottle or to take the large teat. You could pen them together but so that the lambs can't get to the udder, for a few hours until the lambs are hungry, and then milk some off the big teat so that it isn't to engorged and then get one lamb onto that teat to have a good drink before you let the other lamb onto the normal teat.
I had a favourite Shetland ewe used to do this. I'd usually get one of the lambs to be using the "cow teat" without my help by Day 3 at the latest. She was very tame so I could just do this in the field, didn't need to pen them.
Don't keep any offspring for breeding, this is hereditary. And if you don't want to do this every year, mark the ewe and cull her this backend.
Oh - and now is a good time to milk off some colostrum and pop it in the freezer, in case you need some later ;)