The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: bj_cardiff on March 14, 2020, 03:25:35 pm
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What do others do for this? I've had a few cases over the years. Usually I just pull them out every day for a couple of days and they stay out. I've just spotted an older lamb(maybe 10 days) out in the field with a weepy eye. I've pulled the eyelid out but I'm not convinced it'll stay out this time.
I have some Alamycin, has anyone injected this into the eyelids?
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I have done the alamycin injection but it needs a very fine needle, which you likely don't have to hand.
Before going to those lengths - do you pinch the eyelid when you turn it back out? Just bruises it enough to cause the slightest of swellings, and is often enough to keep it from inverting again ;)
Another thing... ime, this occuring can be an indicator of dehydration, and when it's an older lamb like this, sometimes coupled with mastitis starting in the ewe, so it's a good idea to also check if the lamb is nice and full and the ewe's udder is as it should be.
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Tend to pinch the eyelid at birth and within a day it’s self righted. If we’ve asked the vet to inject lambs they’ve always used a white antibiotic. If you are having multiple lambs with entropion it will quite often be due to a ram carrying the gene so best to cull him.
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It's always dangerous to make deductions from a small number of lambs, but yes, we did have one tup who seemed prone to throwing lambs with turned in eyelids (both upper and lower). We now make that one of our standard checks when doing navels, since if you can catch it and correct it early before everything becomes irritated, that's by far the best option.
When we had one which wouldn't correct manually, we injected 0.5ml of betamox under the skin of the eyelid. We had a vet do this using a very fine needle. I held the lamb VERY tightly, with its head against my chest, whilst the vet (also my sister - handy for some things :love: ) did the injection.
This had everything sorted within 24 hours. I didn't know about the pinching eyelid trick at this point though, so that might have also worked. I also bought some eye drops from an optician, which seem to help. I originally had them for myself when I was suffering from dry eyes in the morning. It's a really greasy mixture which blurs the vision a bit initially, but it was oh sooooo comfy for me, so I figured it probably works the same for the lambs too.
HTH!
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Thanks for the replies. I do have some very fine needles in my 'stash' but its no bother to get some from the vets on monday if they are too big.
I'll catch her again later and take a good look and see how it is. This lamb is by a new ram, which is a slight concern. My first ewes were blue faced leichester and they passed it on and I've seen a few over the years, but thankfully that seems to be less and less.
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Pinching can work in young lambs but older tend to need an injection of thick penicillin type this also cover any infection from the damage to the eye ( you can use liquid paraffin ) to push the eyelid out so not using AB'S or MICHEL CLIPS . You can in time breed it out remembering that ewes may have the genes and will be ok until you buy a ram with the gene
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Pinching can work in young lambs but older tend to need an injection of thick penicillin type this also cover any infection from the damage to the eye ( you can use liquid paraffin ) to push the eyelid out so not using AB'S or MICHEL CLIPS . You can in time breed it out remembering that ewes may have the genes and will be ok until you buy a ram with the gene
Thanks Shep, where can I buy MICHEL CLIPS?
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Speak to your vet , i used to buy medical staple guns from my vet ,easier to use . The injection with a small 1ml syringe and small needle is about same as using clips from an application point of view , best for a vet to show you how at first . So maybe just catch the lamb and take to the vet for treatment and get them to show you how then you can make an informed decision