The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Bramham Wiltshire Horns on March 12, 2019, 05:44:19 pm
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Hi we had our first lambs of the year today
Ewe did everything herself turns out there was 3 in there ???????After been scanned twins, lambs up and sucking after 3 minutes, going to give some extra colostrum after tea to top
Just got to keep the feed up on the ewe so she doesn't run out of milk
She has lick bucket as well
What other advice could you give
I know I will have to give milk to top the ewe
How much colostrum should I give the lambs I.e just one feed or over next few days before I go onto topping up
Cheers
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Top up with a dose of colostrum (normally 100ml) per lamb once you have seen them suck the ewe, within first 6 hours of life. I leave them to it for the first week, my ewes have enough milk until the lambs are a week old, but after that I turn her out with twins and take a lamb off and rear on the bottle. Lessens the risk of mastitis, doesn’t pull the ewe down as much (she’s already worked hard to produce them- all of my triplet ewes were scanned wrong and used all their reserves to get the lambs to birth), and you end up with 2 good lambs and a pet rather than 3 small lambs despite topping up.
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Rule of thumb for lambs NOT suckled is 50ml per kg but since your lambs may have suckled then just check how full their tummies are and how content before giving anything . You can just give 1 feed of colostrum but better 2 0r 3 in the first day then powdered milk . You may find that only 1 lamb needs constant toping up or non if the ewe is milky sometimes the ewe can cope with 3 for a week or two then the lambs demand is to much and 1 lamb falls behind
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I'd remove the weakest/smallest now. Its much easier to get them to accept the bottle at a day or few hours old.
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I'd remove the weakest/smallest now. Its much easier to get them to accept the bottle at a day or few hours old.
Best leaving on the ewe until 24 hours old so it has enough colostrum :thumbsup:
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I'd remove the weakest/smallest now. Its much easier to get them to accept the bottle at a day or few hours old.
Oooh, I wouldn't! I'd maybe start topping them up after a few days, so that they're used to a bottle as well as the ewe. But then, if I was going to take one off, I'd remove the strongest one, since that has the most chance of surviving the hard life of a pet lamb.
That said, our Zwartbles regularly raise triplets without major drama, as long as they themselves are well fed, and as long as the lambs are weaned a bit earlier than normal to give the ewe chance to recover.
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Agree with Womble … remove strongest one after a few days
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Having seen how rough lambs are when shoving others off a teat I will not leave three on a ewe anymore. I would take the strongest lamb or a ram lamb (provided you do not intend to keep it) as the bottle lamb.
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HI
thanks for all the good advice
i went down at 11pm last night all had fat warm bellies so signs that they have been feeding
same agaimn this morning i will offer bottles of milk and assess over the next few days
Ewe is getting plenty of gub to keep up energy,
i still have a few to lamb so maybe opportunities to adopt on depending how things go
once again thanks for all the advice
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I would just mention again the high chance of mastitis if you leave 3 on a ewe. It is such a temptation when you see the ewe has plenty of milk and is coping well, and especially when you can just top the lambs up with a bottle and not have to deal with a solitary pet lamb. But in no time at all the sweet gentle little lambs turn into voracious feeders and the ewe, with the best of feeding, just cannot cope. I have spoilt many a good ewe by convincing myself "this is a good mother, plenty of milk, she can manage." The poor animal, being constantly butted for milk develops mastitis and has to be culled. I would say, the chances of a ewe left with 3 lambs developing mastitis is about 80%. I have had it work; but the triplets never grew as well as a good set of twins, so now I would just keep 2 on and either foster the third, bottle it completely, or sell to someone else. (If the latter, you obviously keep the 2 biggest and sell the smallest!)
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thanks Landroverroy
appreciate that
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I would just mention again the high chance of mastitis if you leave 3 on a ewe. It is such a temptation when you see the ewe has plenty of milk and is coping well, and especially when you can just top the lambs up with a bottle and not have to deal with a solitary pet lamb. But in no time at all the sweet gentle little lambs turn into voracious feeders and the ewe, with the best of feeding, just cannot cope. I have spoilt many a good ewe by convincing myself "this is a good mother, plenty of milk, she can manage." The poor animal, being constantly butted for milk develops mastitis and has to be culled. I would say, the chances of a ewe left with 3 lambs developing mastitis is about 80%. I have had it work; but the triplets never grew as well as a good set of twins, so now I would just keep 2 on and either foster the third, bottle it completely, or sell to someone else. (If the latter, you obviously keep the 2 biggest and sell the smallest!)
This.
Sadly, I suspect it is something each of us has to learn for ourselves :'(
Having said which, the last two years we have managed to keep four lots of triplets without having any full-on pets, but keeping the families together in the field. Sometimes that doesn’t work; sometimes the mother stops the lambs coming for the bottle.
In three of the four cases, it’s started with topping up all three lambs in the family and pretty soon settles down to one lamb gets most of its feed from us, one gets top-ups from us when it’s hungry, and the third lamb soon stops coming to us and is it’s mother’s favourite.
If the mothers had prevented us feeding any, or if the third lamb had been seen to be bullying the mother for milk at any time, I would have taken the third lamb off.
Our Lessa (Shetland x Blue-faced Leicester, very milky) just keeps having three, and when it was Shetland cross lambs, a lovely spring and a good (not too dry) summer, she managed just fine with no help except always being on the best grass and having grass pellets if she wanted. Last year it was Romney cross lambs and a cold spring, and she needed a bit more help early on. She wasn’t too keen on us topping up her lambs but we kept the family handy until the lambs knew all about the bottle and would come running when called, no matter what Mum said! When we then had a long drought, we were soooo glad we’d got two of her lambs trained to come for a bottle!
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thanks Sally
thats the great thing about Forums like this everyone has there own systems that work for the but for newbies like me i can scan the experience from people and adapt to work for us
thanks to all that have inputted
i will keep regular update on this thread to see how we have done
:thumbsup:
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I know sheep have tougher udder and reats, but when my Boer had triplets, they actually bit her teats by trying to hang on when another tried to push in. One expensive vet bill and antibiotics, i now keep a close eye on triplets and remove one when i see them getting rough.
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While here in Argyll I cannot leave triplets on , not from the mastitis point but from the one lamb falling behind , so I leave them on for up to 10 days and if no new mother then off to the pets . But I have had 100 triplets running in 2 lots on 1st year seed grass 150mm long fed nuts twice per day with the lambs given access to creep feed shelters , weaned at around 10wks NE mule ewes in the Scottish borders . Only the odd mastitis or other problem
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I know sheep have tougher udder and reats, but when my Boer had triplets, they actually bit her teats by trying to hang on when another tried to push in. One expensive vet bill and antibiotics, i now keep a close eye on triplets and remove one when i see them getting rough.
This happens in sheep too, and is probably the main reason the triplets mothers get mastitis. The cuts provide an entrance route for infection, and the stressed ewe’s immunity is lowered by the demands on her system.
I’ve seen orf on the udder when the ewe doesn’t have enough milk too. (Doesn’t have to be triplets, just any situation in which growing lambs are aggressively seeking more milk than the ewe can give.)
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Turns out I may need a new scanner another set of triplets scanned to twins ????
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At least your cade lamb will not be lonely.
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Not doing bad!
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Turns out I may need a new scanner another set of triplets scanned to twins ????
not much point scanning if they are not accurate
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LAMBING UPDATE
so we finished lambing yesterday afternoon
in total we had 13 lambs from 5 ewes 3 x triplets and 2 x twins 9 ewes and 4 tups
1st ewe: all ewe lambs all growing well and not started giving bottle as yet, ewe seems to be managing fine and will continue to keep a close eye on her, no assistance with Lambing
2nd ewe; again all ewe lambs this time she has rejected a lamb after 7 days so i have been bottling 3 times a day when i call in to check on sheep, she is taking 150-200mls per meal, no assistance with lambing
3rd ewe: twins 1 ewe and 1 tup, again no assistance and and up suckling almost straight away
4th ewe; she had twin tup and ewe, but i noticed the week before lambing that one of her teat was 4 x the size of the other i feared it could have been mastitis but once she lambed there was plenty of milk coming out, so i started stripping the milk from it and fed the tup lamb with bottle keeping both lambs with the mother yesterday the tup lamb was latching on to the teat and it seems to have reduced in size, again no assistance
5th ewe i had feeling was carrying triplets with the size of her, she was in labour for a while turns out she was breached so had to assist and get the back legs out, it was a wopper of a tup lamb next 2 came out fine, 2 tups and a ewe
all have had plenty of colostrum but mother seems to be doing well and all are suckling so will play this one by ear again and if one starts to fall behind will have bottle on hand
thanks for reading
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I would always choose the lamb which is the most different in size to the other 2 lambs