The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: JFW67 on May 20, 2022, 06:33:43 pm
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Hello all,
I am new to sheep - I have had a flock of 8 Ewes and a Ram since last September and have 11 lambs off them this Spring. All wormed and treated with Heptivac P.
I have just been through the process of checking feet and have two problems.
1.
One of the ewes has shocking feet and I need some advice of the best way to treat them.
She managed to escape when I last checked feet and wormed the ewes prior to lambing so I did not then look at her feet and she is the only one who did not lamb - so I have not really had a look at her closely in the last month - too busy dealing with the rapid learning curve of lambing (and then my wife got COVID and I caught it off her!!)
The rest of the flock are fine. The one I am concerned about is the only one that required any serious trimming - one or two others I took a very small amount off. Clippers were treated with alcohol based iodine between each hoof and each sheep.
Knowing that I should not be excessively removing hoof I have trimmed some material away that was clearly mall shaped and some shelly hoof, have washed away some muck and then sprayed the whole thing with iodine.
What is my next step? Two images attached.
I have not treated any of them with zinc - the logistics and cost of it dissuaded me until now, and their feet have been fine.
I have considered making a set of foot baths out of cartons, penning her in with hurdles and standing her in it for the required duration.
2.
One ram lamb has a seriously damaged horn which is badly out of place and is bleeding. He was fine yesterday so it is a new injury. All I have done is spray the area with iodine.
What is my next step. Two images attached.
Any advice gratefully received.
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You don't say that the ewe was limping so why trim ?? picture 1 im not sure what im looking at not much left of the cleet picture 2 is a nice foot , hard to tell from pictures any smell of rot ?? The lamb ,i personally would remove the horn and cover with cobwebs to stop any bleeding then a cream / pie tar /stockholm tar / silver wound spray to keep off the flies and then crovect /clik or similar all over to protect against blowfly , you say you've wormed & hep but not sprayed for blowfly ??
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You don't say that the ewe was limping so why trim ?? picture 1 im not sure what im looking at not much left of the cleet picture 2 is a nice foot , hard to tell from pictures any smell of rot ?? The lamb ,i personally would remove the horn and cover with cobwebs to stop any bleeding then a cream / pie tar /stockholm tar / silver wound spray to keep off the flies and then crovect /clik or similar all over to protect against blowfly , you say you've wormed & hep but not sprayed for blowfly ??
Thanks for the reply.
No smell of rot and not limping. The hoof material I trimmed was up along the side of the hoof where it was separated from the foot. I understood that this was the only situation in which trimming should happen with the intention of ensuring material does not lodge in the cavity creating problems. I am not sure what the cleet is.
How would you remove the horn?
My understanding is that Blowfly is not a common issue in this area - Coastal upland north coast Northern Ireland. The local farmer who sold me the ewes and who I tend to use for advice does not routinely treat for flystike but treats as required if any of her flock or surrounding flocks have outbreaks . . . Is this rubbish? They farm the sheep on as registered organic producers. She is currently away so not available for me to talk with.
Thanks again.
Thanks again for your help.
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The cleet or clee is the individual toe , yes you can trim horn to stop mud etc getting behind it but i think you may have gone a bit much ( but hard to tell from the photo ) ( often hard trimming can cause more problems )normally you would wait until the sheep was limping and the go looking for the reason why and trim or not ( sometimes antibiotics and no trimming is the way to go ) have a look at AHDB SHEEP FEET . If your friend is organic then treatment rather than protection is the way she has to go , you say that you are on a windy open area so blowflies are maybe not a problem but you do say they can happen , i think once you found and had to treat a lamb /ewe for maggots you may want to go down the protection route . The horn depends on how much it is still connected to skin and how damaged , if the horn is totally broken inside and wobbling only held by a little bit of skin then just trim with scissors if less damage then you may want to take to the vet for trimming with anesthetic .
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Thank you.
Do I do anything more with the feet or just keep an eye on her. The white material on the Cleet concerns me.
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JUST WATCH . Apparently cleet is a Scottish word for a foot digit , all my life this is a word i used and heard used
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Apparently cleet is a Scottish word for a foot digit , all my life this is a word i used and heard used
I spent most of my early years in Australia . . . It’s amazing how much ‘English’ isn’t! 🙄🤪. I spend a lot of time trying to work out what was just said . What on earth is a clatch. . . Local guy I have things to do with relating to bees used the word three times in my last conversation with him. Older guy, strong accent and I think he doesn’t understand most of what I say either.
I build boats for a living so a cleet is the thingy you use to temporarily fix deck lines in place!
Thank you again. I’ll keep my eyes on her.
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For the lamb's horn, wobbling around it will be painful and annoying so Shep's advice to remove it is good - by yourself or by the vet. They bleed a lot as there is an artery in there so don't cut anything fleshy or stringy. The blood on the wool will attract flies so trim it back. The horn is very close to the brain so you don't want infection getting in. We have used (clean) cobwebs on bleeds and they work very well, but you must keep the flies off.
What breed are your sheep? We went for many years without using an anti-flystrike spray because we are on a windy hill, but then one year our neighbour's sheep were struck and were dying beside our fence (he's not allowed to keep sheep now) thus attracting flies which attacked our sheep too. So since then we have used Crovect each year (and planted biosecurity hedges) - fly strike is a truly horrible visitation.
Not being irish I have no idea what a clatch is. Could be like a clutch as in a lot of eggs (larvae), could be a skep or beehive, could be the bit the honey is collected on (frames? - I'm not a beekeeper) or could be anything. Language in the UK is all about dialects, especially in country areas. Shepherding terminology varies greatly throughout the UK and boggles the mind :D . I come from England originally but live in Scotland and have moved around quite a lot - each move and I have to understand a new dialect and I find people in the new area don't understand words from the previous area (or my English accent). Then there's Gaelic - you'll find one version in Ireland and probably as in Scotland, each area will speak it just that little bit differently.
There's a wonderful clip in the archives (BBC probably) of 'The Man from Strabane' being interviewed about something - not a single word is intelligible to anyone not from Strabane, but we all love listening to it 8) :roflanim:
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Ewe did not lamb, ran away when you caught others and has bad feet ...... get rid asap! Why keep one difficult one when others are easy? Either sell through market or put in the freezer.
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It looks like you’ve trimmed a bit too much hoof even if it was to correct shelley hoof. I have used hoof putty with good results on big pockets of shelley hoof, though you have to make sure the pocket is as clean as possible. If she’s not lame now, I expect she probably will be over winter, coupled with not lambing, I would cull. Feet problems tend to reoccur so 3 strikes and out here. I have a ewe going this year that though she rears 2 very good meat lambs each year, it is hard work keeping her sound over winter. So up the road unfortunately.
For the horn I would ask the vet to look and take the rest off if necessary, they have the necessary equipment to do it safely.
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Thanks all for the advice.
I’m house bound due to covid but am sorting out vet contact asap re the horn.
Thanks again.
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You'll have a job getting a sheep to stand in a container for foot-bathing.
The best solution we've found is to stand them in an old pair of wellies, and hold them on. That way if they stamp about a bit, the welly just goes with the foot, rather than getting cracked or knocked over as happens with containers. Oh, and it also looks hilarious ;D .
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Do you get a lot of tourists driving past slowly as they exclaim at the dodgy ways of farmers Womble? You'll be getting the cruelty down on you :farmer:
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Do you get a lot of tourists driving past slowly as they exclaim at the dodgy ways of farmers Womble? You'll be getting the cruelty down on you :farmer:
He'll be okay as long as it's not both back feet :innocent:
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You'll have a job getting a sheep to stand in a container for foot-bathing.
The best solution we've found is to stand them in an old pair of wellies, and hold them on. That way if they stamp about a bit, the welly just goes with the foot, rather than getting cracked or knocked over as happens with containers. Oh, and it also looks hilarious ;D .
Thank you. :thumbsup:
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Thanks again for input from all.
Damaged horn. Kept a good eye on the horn and have removed it with hoof shears without any issue at all. Caught him yesterday and it was only on by a small section of horn. Much less stressful now he's not covered in fresh blood!
The number of historic forum posts here and elsewhere about damaged horns ripping of sections skull and exposing soft tissue etc was somewhat horrifying!!
Bad feet. Have had a good look at her twice since my first post. She walks soundly and, despite the issue of escaping last time is placid and easily handled.
She was the last but one for me to deal with on that occasion and I think my general incompetence had taken its toll on her calm nature. She escaped under a bit of loose fencing which I've since fixed. I had also left too much space for them so she was able to get a run up!!
All lessons learnt in my usual fashion - begin incompetent and learn fast! ::)
Next lesson is with feet bathing. :thinking: I have set up four 1 litre plastic milk bottles with elasticated cord joining the handless set up so I can tension over the sheep's back. I've worked out how to set up a very restricted crush so she will be hard pressed to move. The plan is to fit the thing on her and then add Golden Hoof to the bottles. :roflanim:
Thanks again.
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Don't forget to have that videoed for us ;D
Apologies for the scare stories about bits of skull coming off with a horn as it was probably me. All our sheep are horned and with more than the usual two, so we get a lot of experience of problems. The mega serious ones are with shearling tups which have big horns and tussle a lot. Horns have a core which doesn't start getting big until the lamb is a bit bigger. It's when the core breaks too that the problems start as it has a big blood supply. In lambs, the outer cover can come off leaving the core behind - cobwebs are especially good in that situation but it soon all grows back. You may find that yours does grow back although it will be a bit shorter than the unbroken one.