The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Big Benny Shep on March 20, 2014, 01:26:57 pm
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Last year we had problems with watery belly with the lambs that were inside. it was well mucked out limed and disinfected but still had issues (lost about 3 lambs)
i did disinfect the wooden rails we use to pen up but there are so many crevices that their must be some bad left in.
We're due to lamb on the 31st and im thinking of galvanised rails so they are easier to clean, and all the pens will be uniform and easier to put together
before next years laming im hoping to concrete the floor so its easier to clean
Generally i lamb outside unless its bad weather or triplets/complications.
can you guys think of any other ideas?
Cheers in advance
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I fill a footbath with FAM and throw the metal hurdles in between lambings where possible, also if the weather is ok I take the lambs straight out and pen them outside and move the pen sites as frequently as possible. Added to that we tube real colostrum if there are any concerns. Inside the same but as there is nowhere clean inside here a thick bed of straw.
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The thing that makes a real difference is Orajet or similar for every newborn lamb, within the first hour of life if you can. Stops infection before it starts ;)
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The thing that makes a real difference is Orajet or similar for every newborn lamb, within the first hour of life if you can. Stops infection before it starts ;)
Surely the source of the infection is from the surroundings, so better to treat the cause rather than the symptom? Why ply each animal with "medicine" when the cause should be identified and eliminated, either through better hygiene or better nutrition of the ewes? (and maybe also better breeding)
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I hate the idea of giving every animal antibiotics as it is born, though I am told most indoor lambing flocks do this from half way through lambing, it would have to be a real last resort for me. Try cleaning up and ensuring colostrum within 2 hours and start pharming if it doesn't work.
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All lambs get kickstart and scourhalt at birth, might start double dipping them with iodine after 4 hours as well as at birth. ewes are fed accordingly to scan results and i always ensure colostrum is in them, even if i have to strip the ewe and bottle the lamb if its a bit dopey. shed is as clean as possible with a hardcore floor, treated with dehydrated lime and the walls and hurdles are treated with fam disinfectant done fairly strong.
is orajet similar to scourhalt?
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It sounds as though you are doing your best there, I can only suggest taking the ewes and lambs straight out the door to lambing pens on a fresh site, not always easy/fun/possible if its pouring rain! But anyway thats what we have been doing here and it works well. Get them away from the pens of death asap! Or if things get really bad turn them out and buy some lamb macs...
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We use disinfectant wipes on metal hurdles between occupants, lime & a change of bedding. We also re spray navels with iodine at least 2 hrs after initial application as we've found some over enthusiastic ewes will lick it off ::) . I think lots of clean dry bedding is essential. Saying that we still had a case of watery mouth last year & this is when we started to use spectam on the vets advice. I think Me is correct in saying it isn't great to simply dose everything so you could just do those which are a bit suspect at birth. Getting colostrum into the lambs is viral to try & combat the pathogens they will be exposed to from birth. There's a 12 hour window for digestion of the antibodies in the colostrum so if I'm at all worried I will give Volostrum as a substitute/top up. After a long night I think it can be tempting to see a lamb suck once & feel everything is ok & leave alone. When I'm tired and want to do this I remind myself of the little lamb with watery mouth last year & make myself stay longer than perhaps necessary, so I have no doubt that lamb has suckled well & has had a good fill of colostrum. We have Ryelands & their woolliness can be a problem, newborns tend to suck anything that they can get their mouths onto; a source of infection. I'm considering a pre-lambing bikini line trim next year to try & reduce this. It does sound like you are doing everything right maybe things just need some tweaking. Hopefully this year will me a great lambing for you
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We try to lamb outside as much as possible but theres a fairly sizable badger population around and about including a sett at the bottom of one of our fields. So at night we bring in the due ones to reduce the risk always hoping they hang on till morning. We've started giving volostrum as standard as at least that way we know a bit better what they've had. This year ours have fallen into 2 neat batches so tomorrow night the first lot will be moved off to a different field with their week old lambs and the shed and pens get a blitz with the jeyes in advance of the second lot due from this weekend onwards. I always breathe a sigh of relief when we get them through the first week and a bit in good shape
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Wellies, when I had Rough Fells, which have huge, long fleeces that the lambs used to suck, I did a mild 'round the udder trim' so that even the dimmest lamb couldn't really latch onto anything but a teat. Not to leave the udder too exposed but just to make the path to it easier.
I've never had watery mouth in my sheep, which I lamb in wooden-hurdle pens, in an open-doored barn. Whereas the neighbour, who lambs hundreds outside, regularly has watery mouth, rattle belly......
I don't use lime or disinfect the hurdles, though they'll have been outdoors all year since being used last year, so lots of rain and (a bit of !) sun. I do top up pens with fresh straw on a regular basis.
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I think a lot will depend on numbers - and luck.
We had a horrible year early on on the moorland farm, when the weather was too awful to put newborns outside, so the lambing pens were getting full and the occupants staying in them longer. We found then that rigorous hygiene between occupants (complete muck-out, sprinkle of lime, clean bedding) was essential, and we also had to muck out if anyone was in a pen for more than 3 days (a recalcitrant adoptive mother, or a first-timer struggling to get the hang of her job, or a weak lamb that wasn't yet fit to be outdoors, for instance.)
In other years, when the norm would be mothered up, suckled and outside within 24 hours, sometimes within 6 hours, we didn't have the problem and only needed the full muck-out if a pen had become very wet or soiled; a layer of fresh bedding sufficed otherwise.
The problem is that you don't necessarily realise that this year is going to be one of those years in time to have already been implementing the rigorous hygiene. So a routine squirt of Orajet to all lambs born inside (which on the moorland farm was all the mule mothers, and any Swales having triplets and any problem Swales, and here is only expected problems or anyone looking like lambing on an horrendous night) makes sure you are ahead of that game.
Most of you will know that I am the first to rant about not jumping to the antibiotics before having established that it's even a bacterial problem, but having had the experience I did when the weather gave us a really difficult lambing, I would now feel negligent if I didn't do it and lost lambs or had lambs struggle because of it.
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Came back on to say that I think that routinely giving volostrum to lambs who aren't triplets, twins on first-timers, or whose mothers aren't thin or short of milk could be even more insidious.
For sure, give extra probiotics if you can see the lamb hasn't a bellyful of mum's magical elixir within the first two or three hours and you can't get her milk into the lamb, but in that case I'd be looking for a reason why that ewe is staying on, and marking her lambs 'not for breeding'. ;)
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I agree with you SallyintNorth. Waterymouth is almost impossible to treat and joint ill frustrating & no doubt very painful for the lambs. Routine prophalatic antibiotics at birth may not be best practice in the ideal world but there's no doubt it saves thousands of lambs up & down the country. For many lambs its the only dose of antibiotics they get in their life. There's nothing more depressing than watching your lamb crop dying after all the work getting them this far.
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Came back on to say that I think that routinely giving volostrum to lambs who aren't triplets, twins on first-timers, or whose mothers aren't thin or short of milk could be even more insidious.
For sure, give extra probiotics if you can see the lamb hasn't a bellyful of mum's magical elixir within the first two or three hours and you can't get her milk into the lamb, but in that case I'd be looking for a reason why that ewe is staying on, and marking her lambs 'not for breeding'. ;)
I agree with you. We don't tube feed but offer a bottle and every so often one will need it usually for the reasons you state and at least we know they've had a belly full to get them started. We had twinsfrom a first timer a couple of days ago and although the first one out clearly got a belly full off mum the second one didn't so had a good guzzle on the bottle. 3days on and mum is feeding them both fine
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Devonlad we had triplets for the first time two weeks ago & while the first 2 suckled no problem the 3rd was struggling so we gave that substitute colostrum for 12hrs. He was fine after that & as soon as he was a bit stronger he was able to find the udder & suck by himself. On Wednesday I also had a ewe who had a difficult labour & had a rather pathetic amount of milk so that lamb also had substitute colostrum for 12hrs. This gave me time to give the ewe Pain relief & a shot of oxytocin. Her milk came through better after and now the lamb is being well fed. I prefer to take colostrum from a very milky mum and freeze it early on in the lambing season but for some reason that hasn't happened this time so we opted for a substitute from the vets. I do agree giving antibiotics randomly isn't a great solution but something like spectam does seem to work, it also means that the traditional penicillin and alamycin can still be given/ should be effective if needed later on in the lambs life... It's such a fine balancing act & I think people must do what they feel comfortable with.
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Now I'm worrying and wondering if I ought to have Orajet or something similar in stock and be using it?
Is it the weather that's making the problem worse this year, or what? I've got another couple of weeks before I start.
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jaykay, with your numbers and type of sheep I wouldn't rush out for Orajet. But maybe get some lime in stock, and if the weather is moist and sufficiently bad for you to be needing to keep families in for longer than normal, do a more thorough clean out between occupants, and a sprinkle of lime before re-bedding.
Another factor we had in our bad year was that there was water running between the pens, taking infection with it, so we changed the water buckets to less tippy ones and kept a much better eye on that thereafter. And made sure any wet pens got cleaned out and dried up quickly before fluids spread about. I did buy a product that soaks up more water than straw (it's sold for stabled horses) to use under the straw but I don't think that made much of a difference really.
With an earth floor, seeping groundwater could be an issue too. We get this in our earth-floored stables. Wood shavings or (dust-extracted) sawdust can help contain that somewhat.
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We used to have oxytetracycline tablets from the vet to give to multiples or any lambs slow to suck, the tablets were only about 10p each and the vet would dispense small numbers so you could maybe ask about these if you want to have something to give just incase, worth having for a few pence. When we started with sheep and lambing we were told that we would need to give a tablet to every newborn lamb.
We now keep spectam in instead, however having said that we only occasionally use it on newborns, we have found that if you make sure that the lambs have colostrum soon after birth then they are fine, we generally tube feed colostrum (needs to be freshly milked or stored frozen rather than the formula) if lambs are being slow to suckle initially, so at least we know that they have definitely had a good drink. We do use it if occasionally a young lamb develops any scour later on.
We lamb over 6 weeks or so and the pens will be reused, we don't muck out except to remove anything on the surface such as afterbirth as I think full muck out of the pens would cause more contamination spread in the barns with potential for debris to be dropped. We do sprinkle hydrated lime liberally in the pens and add plenty of fresh straw. Have probably only used spectam on a handful of lambs out of 100 born this year, the lambs have remained in the mothering pens for 2 to 3 days generally and then gone into small groups inside.
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Normally we stick to the clean bedding in the birthing/mothering up pen and putting the lambs outside as soon as possible. This year, though, the ewes came inside for a month over the worst of the weather and I know the sheds won't be as clean as I'd like, so Spectam will be the order of the day. We leave our hurdles out through the summer to be cleaned off by sun and rain, and the shed drinkers are drained and cleaned out unless they're needed for calf-rearing.
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we ve almost finished here :) we at 120% at the mo, have had no watery mouth (used on advice Orojet) as a routine birth measure when iodined. We would rather AB everything with that couple of pence squirt than see them go down hill, like farm vet says, why get them that far and see them fall at that last hurdle?
i can speak for both of us and say its a cert for our lambing kit from now on.
i d be more worried about pneumonia with housing and pens. some times this season we have run out of daylight as theres been so much to go through some ewes take that extra bit of penned time, keep as much air going into sheds as possible, lime between, we also been told to use darker less shiny straw as far more absorbant for bedding. we never ever use owt but iodine for cords, as nature intended.