The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: crobertson on April 05, 2016, 09:28:13 pm
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Just after some advice
Went to put fresh water in with our 'girls' tonight and they were acting very odd. They normally come straight over for a stroke but instead they ran over, very excitable but then went very nervous. They wouldn't come to me and didn't want to be touched. They went in their shelter heads drooped, starring at the walls and I noticed they were all twitching slightly. I tried to add a short video but the file was too large, they were just standing still in their shelter, one with a back leg and head twitching and another with a full body twitch / shiver, the rest were hiding behind the shelter.
What could this be ? Grass staggers ? Hopefully I've caught it early as they were fine yesterday. I gave them some of the lambs creep pellets so I could watch them eat something - within 15 mins they were all back to normal and roaming around the field. The are texel hoggets, no lambs etc vaccinated, wormed and fluked up to date.
Just to add we've spoke to a friend of ours who knows them, how their kept etc and they can't think of anything obvious it can be.
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Were you close enough to smell their breath?
I take it they aren't pregnant?
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They can act like that when they see small flies. Ours were doing something similar a few days ago, when it was sunny and hot. They can seem mad and distracted.
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Could they have had a scare like a dog or fox?
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I've seen the tiny fly behaviour, hope it's just that x
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Mine were doing that the other day when the flies were out. Had a quick panic , at first glance it looked like fly strike :relief:
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Midges or flies.
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midges
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Thanks for all of your replies
Yes it could possibly be tiny flies / midges as it was a sunny warm day and today with the cooler weather they're perfectly normal. The past day or two we've started to get pheasants in the fields and one made me jump a mile never mind the sheep !