The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: piggy on September 09, 2011, 09:49:35 pm
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Some of you might remember my post nearly 3 weeks ago about my shock lamb,tonight i go out to feed them(only a handfull to keep them tame) and its gone i am totally gutted,searched round everywhere for last couple of hours but nothing,i just dont get it there is no way it could of escaped out of the field plus i dont see why it would have left its mum,it was 2 days short of 3 weeks and although small it seemed a strong little thing,im gonna search again at first light as the last hour of searching has been in the dark,there are 7 other ewes,2 ram lambs and my tup in with them,could a fox still have taken it or any ideas? and then to top it off me and the OH have just had a massive row.
Karen
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is its mother still there is she distressed why have you fallen out you cant fall out because of a lamb :farmer:
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Firstly :-* about the row. And even more :-* :-* about the lamb.
I think a tup would see off a fox.
What are your field borders - hedge/fence/wall? Lambs can get through/under remarkably small gaps and do, just because they can ::) Any ditches, rabbit holes?
I hope you hear him yelling in the morning and find him :)
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Mum is fine no calling doesnt seem worried,the whole boundry is fenced with green wire that looks like chicken wire if that makes sence so it couldnt have got off our land although we looked in the neighbours field just incase,they are in a field with stock fence,the fox is around at the moment as my very silly neighbour informed me yesterday that he didnt shot it as it had a rabbit in its mouth and not one of his chickens,it did concern me that it wasnt yelling as it was quite a vocal little thing.
The row was him and his teenage boy who then buggered off but of course it was my fault for not backing him up.
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maybe he is tucked up somewhere out of view? surely the mother would be calling for the lamb? wow I cAnt believe whats happened !!!! please let us know what you find in the morning!!
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I know foxes (and badgers) are said to take lambs - but I think that is only new born, weak ones? I know my female goats would die themselves before allowing anything to take their kids, and would say a ewe would do the same. They would chase off a fox surely?
In the Spring I found a tiny lamb outside our field gate just as it was going dark. No more than a couple of days old. I popped it in with the goat kids as it was too dark to go searching for ewes with lambs. I was amazed when I traced where it came from next day - it had squeezed under a field gate, and walked down the lane, quite a long way for such a tiny lamb. Farmer was surprised too. So, lambs can stray.
Hope you find your lamb.
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When did you last see it? If it died something could have carried it off I'm afraid. Hope you find it.
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Life sends things to test us, but realy its just nature, we cannot watch things 24/7 so do not kick yourself, nature IS cruel!!!
As for a row, these things also happen all the time, take 2 people and put them together, add stress, finances, children, problems and what you end up is 2 people that do not know what the other one wants!!!! I think its hard to live without rows, all part of the colourful people we are, only dull people don't argue!!! :bouquet: :bouquet:
I would be very upset too but just have to keep saying to yourself that you are not to blame!
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Seems really strange that the mum is peaceful. I wonder whether its playing tricks on you. I hope so.
With regards to your row - i find that my tup is very understanding. When me and OH fall out I take a cup of tea into the field and tell Bob the Ram all about it. As long as i am scratching his ears, he'll listen for ages.
Hope tomorrow brings a better day :-*
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In the daylight this morning i did find the lamb but it was dead,dont know how we missed it last night but im thinking it was dead then,at least it was not a fox,next question as to why it died clean bum,feels a good weight and not a mark on it.
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Our vet says those 'drop dead' young ones are often clostridial. I think you're probably right about it being dead last night, which is why it wasn't yelling and why mum had stopped calling it too.
I'm really sorry :-*
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ahh thats such a shame im really sorry to hear this news !!!
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Aw - so sorry :'(
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I would have said clostridial before you even knew it was dead. They die very quickly without warning and it's usually the best lambs as they are growing fast and don't have the reserves to fight off the clostridial infection.
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Ah, shame :(
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This is my first years lambing so sorry to be a bit thick could someone explain to me about clostridial infection.
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clostridial diseases in sheep (http://www.championvet.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:multi-component-sheep-vaccines-i-clostridial-diseases&catid=34:articles&Itemid=57)
Did you know to vaccinate the ewes pre-lambing with Heptvac, Bravoxin or similar.
Basically they're nasty bacteria that live in the soil, ie everywhere, and they make lethal toxins. Often the only clue it's gone wrong is a dead lamb/sheep :-*
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Sorry about your lamb. At least you now know about vaccinating the ewes - and hopefully can prevent it happening again. There is always something new for us all to learn when keeping livestock, isn't there?
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This was the shock late lamb? Well you wouldn't have known that you needed to boost mum's clostridial antibodies as you didn't know she was in lamb.
And none of us thought about it either - it might have been possible to vaccinate the lamb at a couple of weeks, I think. Normally you would not vaccinate a suckling lamb as it should be getting its antibodies from mum but in the case of the ewe not having been vaccinated in the 12 weeks prior to lambing I think you can use the vaccine in the lamb.
So I am sorry that I didn't think about it either. Hopefully all of us will have learned from your sad outcome. :bouquet:
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I still have the little lamb in my tack room would it be worth doing a pm to confirm,all the other ewes earlier in the year had there lambs and no problems at all.
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Colloidal silver is a fantastic cure all if you think your lamb may be succombing to some sort of viral or bacterial infection. You would simply add it to some milk and bottle feed the lamb. Sometimes lambs on bottles get the scours and we have found here if we add colloidal silver the scours disappear quickly and lambs get back on track. When I first heard about colloidal silver I thought it was some sort of hippy potion but if you research it, there is sound science behind the antimicrobial actions of silver based compounds. Also great for humans. Take it at the first sign of a viral infection. We make our own. Cheapest medical rememdy on the market.
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Thanks Nuffield. If you make your own - could you post the recipe?
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Piggy, if it were me I wouldn't do a PM, I'd bury it in a quiet corner somewhere (I didn't say that, but it was a pet of course ;)) and chalk it up to experience :-*
Sally I don't know if vaccinating the lamb would have saved this one - I don't think it would have had chance to build up any immunity by 3 weeks old?
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Awww, so sorry to hear about the lamb (and the row :-*) Probably survival of the fitest and all that - Nature has a way of sifting the weaker ones out. Look forward to next year when you'll be ready and waiting and pacing the floor waiting for those first lambs to appear AND you would have had the chance to understand about the vaccinating etc and feel excited, optimistic, scared, and DELIGHTED when they do finally appear. :wave: Its all a learning curve.....and we NEVER stop learning. :bouquet:
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Sally I don't know if vaccinating the lamb would have saved this one - I don't think it would have had chance to build up any immunity by 3 weeks old?
Top marks that woman. The earliest you can vaccinate is 2 weeks (Covexin - with Heptavac it's 3 weeks), it takes two weeks to develop any immunity - and full immunity requires a booster 4-6 weeks later. So yes, given that the ewe could not have been vaccinated in the 8 weeks prior to lambing, there was no way of giving the lamb better clostridial protection for the first 4 weeks.
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My neighbours - lifetime farmers - don't vaccinate. A lot of the decision as to whether to vaccinate or not is down to statistics and risk factors.
I am really sorry to hear about your lamb but I would not base your decisions about future processes on one lamb born out of season.
If the same lamb had been born to the same mother earlier in the year it could have been entirely different. It seems to me from the stories i hear from people who have been breeding for years loss is part of the big picture and we have to try and take it in our stride. (Seems to me that it doesn't hurt any less though)
:'(
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www.silverlungs.com (http://www.silverlungs.com) but there are other generators on the market. Do your own research though? Vaccinations are an interesting topic. Personally from the data available for humans there are just as many risks in vaccinating as not, particularly now we have antibiotics, antivirals and potent natural cures like colloidal silver. The question I have never had answered is if our governments are so concerned about the risks of flu pandemics and other infectious diseases, why are vaccines free yet to get an anti viral or antibiotic you need a prescription. And don't tell me they are worried about resistance because in the livestock sector antiobiotics are sometimes included in feed rations. Silver used to be registered by the US FDA in the early 1900s until the big pharmaceutical companies realised they could never compete against such a cheap and effective immunological defence. There are no safety issues if you consume the right chemical form of silver (colloidal). Good luck.