The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: ZacB on April 09, 2012, 07:36:24 am
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Hi all, hoping I can pick your knowledge & experience. New to keeping lambs & have this little chap who stands out from the others due to his legs. Skips & hop's like the rest but, as I'm sure you can see, he has bowed legs. He will be departing at some stage in the future & just want some advice / reassurance that all is okay.
(http://gallery.thepoultrykeeper.co.uk/d/42848-1/Bow+Legged.JPG)
OMG, looking at the photo now he looks a real bruiser :o
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We get the odd one, got one this year. Usually they manage ok, and as long as they can stand and walk on all 4 legs then Trading Standards will be okay about taking them to the abbatoir when the time comes.
I have heard one farmer say he was asked to sign something at the abbatoir to say the lamb had always been like that, presumeably to absolve the abbatoir of being thought to have broken its legs or something.
We sell most of our lambs deadweight, some in the ring, rarely a few stores, and some go directly to our nearest abbatoir for our local butcher. Any bandy-legged ones we would only take directly to the local abbatoir, we wouldn't put them through a ring or long journey to a processing plant. So far there's never been one the butcher wasn't happy to have - and there doesn't look to be much wrong with yours apart from his bow legs! - but if there were we would just have it for our own freezer.
I have a personal theory that the deformity may relate to a mineral deficiency in the ewe - certainly the one we had this year was a triplet from a ewe that had missed her usual mid-pregnancy mineral drench (with chelated copper) and is a type of ewe that does need her minerals, including coppper.
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There is a pic of a lamb just like that in my eddie straiton tv vet book!!!
Let me dig it out and I'll report back!
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Yer tis!! (may the copyright gods forgive me 8))
(http://i1194.photobucket.com/albums/aa363/missus-snow/bowleglamb.jpg)
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I've never seen a bandy one like that. Hope he's okay. He looks like my mum's coffee table!
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My one was born this way, so it's not about rapid growth on lush grass in this case. Don't know about ZacB's lamb though.
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Thanks for replies. Am keeping an eye on for the moment. New to lambs & these are basically brought in lambs, approx 2 weeks old so not 100% sure on past details etc. Picked for all the wrong reasons, cute, came to us etc etc ;D as I say, new to lambs & these are just to give us a little experience.
It may be that she's a little lame, walks on the outside of the hoof, although she does walk/skip/hop on as said before :-\ If you run your hand up & down there is no obvious sign of distress or anything a miss so as I said, will monitor & hopefully things will turn out okay.
Maybe a little over worried 1st timer ::)
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Just a quick up-date on 'Bruiser' as he is now known. Continued waddling for a few weeks & then things sorted themselves out. Would never know now that anything was ever a miss.
Thanks to everyone for their advice & assurances.
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...Thats really good news :thumbsup:
It`s nice to know Bruiser :sheep: has "grown out" of his problem- may be it was vit. D (rickets) ??? then.
Thanks for the update ZacB ,it is nice to know how things pan out for our little woolly friends.
Tilly :wave:
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Thanks for the update - my one, named 'BandyLegs' at birth, is now all but indistinguishable from the 4 friends he lives with - just a very slight non-straightness in one leg; you wouldn't notice it if you didn't know his history.