The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: [email protected] on May 19, 2014, 03:39:04 pm
-
Hi all,
Looking for a little advice. I have 4 orphan Herdwick lambs that are between 10 - 14 days old. They've all been feeding really well and looked well and energetic.
I started offering some creep a few days ago and since then they've started scouring.
Reading online it seems likely that they are having too much milk and or creep - should I cut back their milk as they start eating creep?
Thanks for your advice everyone!
-
What size and frequency of milk feeds are you giving them?
At that age it is very unlikely they will be eating enough creep to cause any problems at all, and they certainly still need their milk for at least another 3-4 weeks.
Is it possible they have an e-coli infection? It's so hard to keep everything clean when bottle-feeding 3-4 times, or more, a day, and they pick up infections really easily. I usually find that mixing a tablespoon or two of live probiotic yoghurt into a litre of milk for a feed or two, and being extra specially careful about keeping everything very clean, clears them up.
-
Thanks Sally - they're on 250ml each 4 times daily. We thought we'd been really good at washing and sterilising everything each time - and we're being even more paranoid about it now. Thanks for your tip on probiotic - we'll give that a try. The vets also said to keep the liquid volume going into them but at a slighly lower % of Lamlac - they all still seem fine - good appetites and active, so fingers crossed it'll pass quickly.
-
I'd give them some hay too, it helps develop the rumen :)
-
I dunno how other people manage their bottles but I usually just keep them in a bucket full of Milton solution (changed every 24 hours). After each feed they'd get a quick wash and then put straight back in the Milton bucket ready for the next feed.
Fingers crossed that your little ones will right themselves soon :) .
-
It sounds as though yours won't get this bad, but I'll share it here for the benefit of future readers of this thread... if you get one scouring badly so that it is becoming dehydrated, you can do two things. Firstly, stop the milk and feed it either Pfzier Scour Formula or Rehydion - mixed up as for cattle but fed in lamb quantities! - until it dries up and perks up. (PSF you can mix up a whole packet and feed it over the next 24 hours; with Rehydion it must be fed as soon as mixed so you use a syringe to suck up just the mount of gel you need.)
You can mix Rehydion with water or milk, so can add it to the feed it's already getting. Or you can just squirt the gel directly into the lamb using a drenching gun.
-
I wouldn't be offering creep to a 10 day old lamb. 3-4 weeks maybe, but only a little, and I take it up at night in case the rats get interested. Good quality hay available at all times.
-
I put creep out from about 2-3 weeks old. But a scant handful, perhaps a tablespoonful, between two lambs, and replace with fresh at least twice a day. They don't generally start to eat it for real until about 4 weeks plus.
-
If the scour smells evil and is greyish in colour you have probably an e.coli infection as mentioned above. I would get some strong AB's into the lambs now. Did they get colostrum at birth?
-
I put creep out at 7 days old, they will start to nibble it. By 3-4 weeks they should be practically inhaling it! And wean at 5-6 weeks.