The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Paul and Caroline on April 30, 2017, 08:11:05 pm
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Hi
We are raising a lot of pet lambs (over 100) and they range between 3 and 5 weeks old. They are in pens of 5 or 10 and have progressed from bottle to shepherdess type milk feeders with between 5 and 12 teats, depending on how many lambs are in the pen. We have several lambs that have developed gungy eyes and 3 that have a significant crusty surface on their noses and chins. I am absolutely happy that this is not Orf and none of the gunge or crust is 'open'. However in the worst cases the lambs are losing hair around their lower eyelids and just above the nose. They all compete almost visciously for the teat, notwithstanding that there are more teats than lambs in every pen and there is much clashing of heads and rubbing together as they feed. Our vet and neighbouring sheep farmer seem to think this is purely a consequence of the scrums they get into when they feed and have just advised us to keep an eye on them. In every other respect they are fit, healthy and eating well. Does anybody recognise any of the symptoms I have described?
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Some times lambs and calves in groups will lick and suck each others faces to get at any milk or milky saliva
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periorbital eczema
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Which milk are you using? I have found that some of the replacement lamb milks seem to irritate their skin, and am always careful to wipe or if necessary wash off any spillages at each feed. Of course you can't do that with an ad lib feeding system.
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Yes Ive seen this many a time I assumed its when some lambs are a little run down. Worth keeping some supplementation like yogurt and if over 5 weeks a dose of oral vit? Perhaps a shot of colostrum mixed into the main feed.
We agree here that sheep fend better outside with grass - anyway of getting your system to let these lambs out. I def beleive sunlight is great for animals and humans.
Most be very costly raising so many cades. My maths has worked out £25 in just milk. Well done for keeping at it.
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Which milk are you using? I have found that some of the replacement lamb milks seem to irritate their skin, and am always careful to wipe or if necessary wash off any spillages at each feed. Of course you can't do that with an ad lib feeding system.
Sally we were using a cheaper powder but have now gone onto Lamlac as we felt none of them were growing as well as we thought they should be - we did mix the two powders for the first couple of feeds in an effort to avoid upsetting their systems. We don't adlib feed we have 3 feeds a day and have taken to removing the feeders immediately after feeding rather than allowing them to chew on empty teats. I take your point about cleaning up however numbers make that quite difficult!
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Well, hopefully Lamlac is one of the ones that doesn't irritate their skins :fc:
When Downland switched to being a made-with-real-ewes-milk product, I stopped getting a problem.
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We had the same last year with 20 pets using a heatwave feeder. I put it down to the milk irritating them (and it was Lamlac - sorry). They recovered when weaned but didn't look pretty. Keep an eye on them though we had one that formed abscesses and despite antibiotics we lost it.
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periorbital eczema
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periorbital eczema
Hi I did see and have taken notice.....honest! Just haven't discounted the allergy possibility either. What treatment would you suggest? I note an ab jab is recommended but what about short term symptom relief? We are now finding even their ears are crusting up
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Overcrowding at troughs or feeders, abrasions when competing, nice bit of damp/spilt milk = lesions around eyes and muzzle. Penecillin effective - unless its something completely different - which it could be. Take advice from tinterweb at your peril
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With this amount of pet lambs I would have the vet especially if their growth is not as good as expected?
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If you are using ad lib feeders but actually restricting their access to certain feed times I am struggling to see how you feed 100 lambs without them competing at the teat. It can be a scrum feeding half a dozen on the bottle.
The idea of ad lib is not that they gorge themselves but that they can drink when they need to and once they know it is there all the time they don't gorge and don't fight for teats. I am afraid they will chew teats, usually when they are older.
If you have a problem then it will travel quickly through your lambs so I would get it checked out asap.
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If you are using ad lib feeders but actually restricting their access to certain feed times I am struggling to see how you feed 100 lambs without them competing at the teat. It can be a scrum feeding half a dozen on the bottle.
The idea of ad lib is not that they gorge themselves but that they can drink when they need to and once they know it is there all the time they don't gorge and don't fight for teats. I am afraid they will chew teats, usually when they are older.
Hi again I accept your point but with 114 lambs in 23 pens I just do not have enough feeders (machines they call them here) to put one in every pen and leave it there. You are right about the scrum..... all of the above said, the vet is on her way as I type.
If you have a problem then it will travel quickly through your lambs so I would get it checked out asap.
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Given the age of the lambs and that their feed conversion rate goes down the older they get I suggest you consider involving your vet. At that age anything that affects their overall wellbeing is likely to check growth and leave them open to other problems.
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Would be intrigued to know the outcome of vet visit and the circumstances for rearing such a large batch of pet lambs ?
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Hi again I accept your point but with 114 lambs in 23 pens I just do not have enough feeders (machines they call them here) to put one in every pen and leave it there. You are right about the scrum..... all of the above said, the vet is on her way as I type.
It can be an uphill battle to raise cades when you have enough space, time, feeders etc. Trying to do it without enough equipment is a recipe for problems I would have thought. Glad to hear vet is on their way and I hope you can resolve the problem.
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Would be intrigued to know the outcome of vet visit and the circumstances for rearing such a large batch of pet lambs ?
I know people who buy in cades in large numbers and finish them. Maybe Paul and Caroline have done the same. Obviously mixing lambs from different places isn't always a good thing.
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I've always had considerable misgivings about the health of cade lambs, particularly whether they got colostrum in those first few vital hours.
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Vet thinks it is a staf infection and the three most badly affected lambs have had an antibiotic jag and I have an antibiotic eye cream for them. Their sore areas have been purple sprayed (not the eyes I hasten to add!) and it's now a case of waiting and watching. They are in a 'sick bay' pen isolated from the rest of the gang. I mentioned peri orbital eczema and she said, "have you been searching the internet....."! Vet also said that the loss of hair around the muzzle is quite likely caused by the milk powder, which was suggested earlier on.
A couple of you wondered how we got ourselves in this position with so many lambs. We have a smallholding in amongst a number of large sheep farms. One of them sold us our first ever lambs last year and this year we offered to help in anyway we could, with lambing. He has 1300 Ewes which were scanned at 229% and was anticipating a high number of cades. We have some large outbuildings which were ideal for a lamb nursery and so the scene was set. I have to say that he has been closely involved with us from minute 1 and didn't just 'leave us to it' but even he had never seen the severity of the crusting and hair loss that we have been experiencing. As an aside we have just come out of an episode of scour which affected about 70 of our lambs and most of the remaining 70 Cade lambs which he kept back once our nursery was full.
So far we have lost 6 of the lambs, possibly as a result of scouring which was tested and came back as cryptosporidium, although two just dropped down dead in front of us before any of the scour started. We had to jag all affected lambs and give them a daily dose of something called scour halt for 5 days. You wouldn't believe the amount of bedding we have got through! Several lambs came down with Joint ills but they all seem to have reacted well to the injections they were given. We have just 2 lambs still on the bottle however they have a degree of brain damage so we don't think they will manage a machine.
The oldest lambs are now 5 weeks and will be weaned in the next week or so. We will keep 10 of them for ourselves to join the two Ewe lambs we kept from last years pets or cades and hopefully they will produce their own offspring this time next year.
It's fairly safe to say we have learned a lot these past 5 weeks!
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POE is a staph infection....
"Periorbital eczema is a common skin condition in the UK often resulting when sheep have too little space allowance at feed troughs and trauma to skin allows entry of Staphylococcus aureus causing severe local infection"
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Being pedantic perhaps, but periorbital eczema isn't a Staph infection. It is a skin condition that creates a route of entry for Staph (and potentially other bacteria) into the body which can then cause an infection. Periorbital just relates to location and eczema is an allergic disorder not an infectious one.
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Ok you got me
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I should have guessed "Staphylococcal dermatitis of sheep" and then I wouldn't have misled people
FM Scott, J Fraser and WB Martin
Abstract
A condition frequently termed "facial" or "periorbital eczema" has been observed in sheep. Studies carried out indicated no viral involvement but a haemolytic Staphylococcus aureus was isolated which produced severe necrotic skin lesions on inoculation into sheep. A more appropriate term for the condition would appear to be staphylococcal dermatitis.
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So if it is frequently termed POE... it sort of is... in a way..
(taking pedantry to the next level)
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So if it is frequently termed POE... it sort of is... in a way..
Maybe so... there are plenty of other examples of us calling health problems by a name that is misleading. Ringworm isn't a worm, and so on :-)
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Of course its a worm. Hence the word "worm" in the title. Next you will be telling me that chickenpox (more commonly known as varicella zoster virus) has nothing to do with chickens!!