The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: raygezer on February 24, 2015, 06:55:48 pm
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Hi im not sure its spelt right ! A guy i know has a flock of poll dorset .about 25 for the last two or three years the lamb mortality rate is well over 25 per cent he has been to vets they give him wormers and pack him off they manage to get to about 6 weeks old then they start to die any ideas please
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If he goes to the vet then does he take poo samples with him ?? I'm assuming they are scouring ?? Or just tell him they are scouring and accept the wormer?? If it was me and they were dying in those numbers I would take a body to the vet for a PM to get answers. It really isn't good enough to accept those losses without investigating why. :rant: My opinion I'm afraid!!
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He really needs to talk to his vet ( or change vet ) tests need to be done to establish a cause , if he needs to medicate the lambs creep with say DECCOX then he needs a prescription , could just buy a coccidiostat but without a firm diagnosis may be a waste
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( no script needed now for deccox in uk, France may be different)
He needs to go and have a proper chat with his vet & explain the problem. My guess is he gets the medication but never goes back to tell them the problem hasnt been resolved. Severe coccidiosis could continue to cause death of severely damaged lambs after treatment due to eg kidney failure, but equally he may have a concurrent problem, eg nematodirus or underlying trace element problem.
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We never had coxxi until last year, we have a shepherdess lamb feeder and thought we would add some lambs from another farm to make it worth rearing them, unfortunatly they brought orf and coxxi onto our farm :-[ :-[
My fault for buying in cades, never again
We didnt realise what it was for a few weeks and by then they had been hit real hard, we lost one lamb but the other recovered (gradually) they were kicked alot back though and the last of them left as stores 2 weeks ago (if you ever take animals to a market and then have to stand as far away from the pen as possible as they sold, you know that you were embarrassed by them)
We got rid of it using vecoxxan which you can get from mole valley and we also got a couple of coxxi tubs from denis brimicombe, I dont know which worked but it helped
This year every lamb is going to get vecoxxan'd before the coxxi hits, if we get orf again we will have to look at scratching them from now on, down side of buying in mule ewes in the summer... we also ended up with orf in the summer and pink eye... but thats another story, flock hopefully can be closed next year
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The guy is selling up at the end of the year im not sure if i want to take on his ewes because of all problems he has had would it be worth it and starting again with jabs worming etc any thoughts please
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If he grazes his ewes with young lambs on the same fields each year, then cocci and nematodirus are definitely worth considering as causes.
Cocci will also make lambs more susceptible to nematodirus.