The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: dixie on April 24, 2012, 12:10:11 pm
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Hi all not been here for ages, but need your worldly advice. Had a few problems with ewes an milk this year but will cover that in a different thread, as it seems to be sorted.
I have a ewe who lambed triplets yesterday early hours, all fine, mum feeding lambs and herself well, until 10 hours later. She stopped eating, was scouring and down. I wormed her, gave her an anti biotic and glucose, no change, spoke to vet who advised 80ml of calciject, made no difference, I topped up the lambs during the night, and gave the ewe this morning a homemade drench (found on here by VSS who I know to be very knowledgeable) of egg yolk, milk and black treacle. I also rolled ivy leaves into her mouth and she ate a few, also managed to get in some cow parsley and hay, not much but some. Spoke to vet this morning he thinks possible twin lamb disease but also possible infection or parasitic problem? (both covered yesterday) he frowned on the giving of ivy but have always been told to do this as an appetite stimulant by many 'old hands', he also said lay off too much sugar as it can upset the rumen. He said to continue trying to get her to eat, and although there's not really much else I haven't already done he can come and give a steroid, any advice out there please, thank you :sheep:
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I would avoid treacle if she's scouring - I know what gingerbread does to me :D :D
As well as the things you have done, it sounds as if she needs some nutritional support. We have used a porage made of something like digestive biscuits or sheep coarse mix softened and mushed with hot water, plus a little salt and a tablespoon of glucose powder, and given orally with a wide tipped syringe (as supplied for use with a lamb tube), in small amounts. You may need to encourage her to swallow by stroking her throat. Is she drinking? - you can also syringe in water
I suspect you should supplement the lambs?
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Thanks for the quick reply, no wont give any more treacle, Yes she is drinking, am keeping an eye on lambs they aren't hungry and have reasonable tummies, they aren't keen on the bottle so don't want to encourage it too much unless I have to. She gets up to let them feed when I push her, just off to check them again.
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You are doing all the right stuff and I would keep up the antibiotics and add some active yoghurt and flat lucozade to what you are doing....good luck!
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She's still down so have called the vet, will keep you posted.
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I would be very surprised if she developed twin lamb disease post lambing. The hint is in the technical title - pregnancy toxaemia. It is something ewes get when they are pregnant.
It can often be very difficult to pinpoint what is wrong with a sick ewe. We had one a few days ago. She had lambed a week earlier and then suddenly for no apparent reason went off her food, and feet. A couple of days later she is fine again. Who knows what the problem was!
If in doubt we often give Tetroxy and multivit. It covers infections that you can't identify positively and the multivit will give a boost.
It's possible your vet doesn't know either. They don't always, so give some sort of general purpose remedy, like calciject which won't do any harm whatever the problem is.
She might just be feeling crap after giving birth - I know I did after my kids were born ;)
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I thought they could still go down with tld post lambing? Your probably right and it's probably something that would sort itself out, but I worry that without eating for 24'hrs and with triplets to feed I can't afford to take a chance, I usually manage with a phone call to the vet and administer drugs myself, but this time think I need help, he'll be here soon.
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Hope it all works out with your ewe, at least the vet can hopefully shed some light on it... :hshoe:
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Vets been he thinks its gut related, gave her steroid injection and glycol drench, not much else to do but wait,,can't even force feed her now, she spits it out.
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That's where syringing liquified stuff onto the back of her tongue works - it goes down before she can spit it out and helps to keep the rumen going. Natural yoghurt as woollyval suggests will also be of benefit if it's gut related. Good luck - hope you don't end up with three pet lambs and no mum.
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This is going to sound nut I know, but get hold of some 'science selective' rabbit food, most bigger pet shops sell it except pets @ home. Smells lovely full of fibre, and can be soaked in warm water and syringe fed (found this out when my rabbit got GI stasis. ;)
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We've had three ewes (just over 1%) go off their food, scoury and depressed, after lambing this year. All have recovered, all had antibiotics and B-vits, one had worm drench, one had anti-inflammatories and vet-only a/bs. (The latter one also had raspy breathing.)
All needed a rest in a warm dry shed, all drank a lot of fresh clean water when available. They picked at fresh lamb cake, eventually began to pick at fresh hay.
Only one couldn't manage to feed her lambs through her illness - she had triplets and adored them but couldn't bear them on her, so we penned them next to her where she could nuzzle and see and smell them but they couldn't get to her teats. She's better now but the triplets are in the pet pens :'(
We and the vets (three of them) still don't know what the problem was.
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Sally sounds similar, she is slightly raspy, no temperature, it's unusual for adult sheep to scour. Put her in the garden on good grass but she barely nibbled, have drenched her with 2 actimels and will give yoghurt amongst other recommendations later . ::). It's so frustrating!
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Apart from an infection, the metabolic thing is a bit tricky at the time of lambing. Was she short of concentrates whilst nesting which masks the shy feeder you might spot earlier on or has she gutsed herself on too much concentrates as soon as she has the capacity after lambing? I can never tell and keep glycol drench on hand to give several doses per day to keep the metabolism in sync if a ewe looks off colour.
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if all else fails and it is TLD, vet could try what ours did, took some rumen contents from one of his own ewes (live ewe) as my ewes rumen had packed up. and made her drink it. Ewe recovered completely (altho we lost the unborn lamb but would have lost both otherwise)
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You can buy ruman stimulant powder made by Provita and give this to help stimulate her rumination/digestion we get this from the vets. Also as said above and even better is rumen fluid from a doner sheep, we have managed to 'steal' it from other sheep while they are cudding and this is easier than trying to tube it, you need to put a stick like a gag in the doner sheep's mouth so they chomp on it and then scrape is off the stick, best if you have a fairly tame sheep that will keep cudding on the sheep and not panic/run away!
B12 /Intravit can be given to help stimulate appetite.
We used to give mulitvit injections to any sick sheep as advised by VSS but unfortunately it can no longer be given to food producing animals and is now only licenced for horses not intended for human consumption so you would not be able to give this to your ewe. Would be very interested if anyone knows of any alternatives to this, other than this a vitamin drench might be an idea.
Keep going with the energy drenches /yogurt etc - if you can get hold of live sheeps or goats milk yogurt this will be much better than cows milk yogurt, have also heard that guiness is good for sick sheep! Also worth picking tasty hedgerow herbs, like cow parsley, to try and tempt her with. Why did your vet disapprove of ivy, we also offer this too to any sick sheep?
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An update, a slight improvement. She is now picking at hay and is a little brighter, I gave liquidised oats and actimel, and some greek yoghurt, couldn't get live yoghurt. Continuing with 50ml glycol drench too. Fingers crossed she's on the up! She keeps chewing a piece of baling twine? I've heard of using another's chewed cud as being successful, hoping she won't need it now, managed to get her on grass for 5 mins, she nibbled at it. Still topping up lambs although it's just one that's really hungry, thanks for all your wonderful help everyone :thumbsup:
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great news dixie, hopefully her milk will come back ok if you keep the lambs with her, we had a ewe be very sick after lambing, she really loved her lamb though through this time - we had to feed it for nearly 2 weeks and then realised that her milk had come back after she recovered and were able to stop the bottle feeding altogether which was a good surprise.
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That's good, yes it's best to leave the lambs with mum to help stimulate her milk, we had one 2 weeks ago on her way to twin lamb disease, I fed the lambs with goat colostrum, her milk came and she is now feeding them totally herself, think I might need to help this one out though as she has triplets.