The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: dyedinthewool on November 30, 2012, 05:51:59 pm
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Hi,
A bit of information please. I bought a ram lamb at local mart in late Sept to cover my 'vast' flock of three ewes. He was sold as a store but was in the ram section.
He did his job and none returned, unfortunately I couldn't keep him as not enough acreage to keep a ram and ewes and lambs plus I have four ewe lambs from this year I am breeding from next year, so I put him back into the mart (Tue) yesterday I had a call from the mart to say he had been rejected by the abattoir because he had ??? wasn't sure of what the guy said - it's something to do with picking up worms from dog faeces. I said i don't have any dogs neither do any of my neighbours, we've not had any hounds across (local gun pack sometimes shoot on neighbours land and the hounds have been known to cross the top paddock).
What was he on about? and will he have passed it on to my girls.
And on a secondary note can I claim my money back from the guy the ram came from or do I count it as 'beware' and don't buy anything from a mart in future.....
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He's talking about a Gid cyst.....which is picked up by sheep eating grass that has had unwormed dogs s****ing on it, basically, and the gid works its way to the brain and starts eating that too.....that's in a nutshell really. There's lots of info if you look up Gid Cyst but as to where you stand, I'm not sure. What have they done with the carcase? Gone to knacker yard presumably.
Mx
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Hi Blinkers, :wave: :wave:
Hope you are all okay up there. ;D ;D
Waiting for the mart guy to get back to me with more info.
He did say 'some' farmers don't always keep up to date with worming their dogs so it could be 'poor' hygiene on the farm issue. He was going to see from the 'ear tag' info who the ram came from.
Now I know what it's called I'l have a google - he must have abreviated it as it didn't sound like that. I don't always understand the Welsh acccent... ::)
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Hiya D :wave: :hug:
I guess if the ram came from one of the mountain flocks then there's not a lot they can do other than keep their fingers crossed that dog owners keep their dogs tapeworm wormed. A few years ago, the vet diagnosed a gid in my Ram Hywel (there is a post on here somewhere). However, fortunately the vet was wrong and Hywel had suffered a minor TIA (stroke) which left him blind in his left eye and a bit of a problem cudding on that side. Having said that, he's still with me, still covers a few ewes each year, is still a devil at tupping time, and is still an absolute 'love' the rest of the time. Sadly, your chap has been opened up and the evidence has been exposed, but it would be good for you to know who the breeder/flock owner was, so that maybe you can avoid a further purchase from that particular flock.
We;re fine here.....now !!!! Waterfalls coming off the fields last week and one of the goat sheds flooded when the drainage ditch was breached, but all OK now and everyone back in their respective pens....phew. Glorious last few days though, thank goodness. How's the pork? :thumbsup: .
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Over here we call it sheep measels. The carcase has white rings in the meat, a bit like measels in people. It cannot be sold as it looks wrong.
By bad hygene I presume he means that dogs, or other canines have been feeding on sheep carcases left unburied or uncomposted. The parasite travels from sheep to dogs. Dogs to sheep.
It is an increasing problem here in Canada as so many of us now have big white dogs, Great Pyrenees, Marremas, Akbash etc etc, living 24/7 with our flocks for predator control.
They work, and are the price of doing business in a lot of places, but this is one of the downsides.
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Sometimes it's called 'hydatid'
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Been doing a bit of googling to find out more - but other than telling me that the dog/possible fox is the original contaminator and that the gid infects the sheep I cannot find anything about whether the paddocks that the ram has been in are now contaminated and whether my other sheep may pick up a 'gid/' from the ram lamb (he was such a sweety) poor thing. Or does it the 'end' within the the ram lamb.
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Ah, no the rest of your stock should be fine. I don't think it can be passed on, it is something that's picked up from the ground......as far as I know. Canadian Sheepfarmer may know more, but I think it stops at the animal that its gained access to.....if you see what I mean.
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It sounds like echinococcus to me. It is a tapeworm of canids (which are the definitive hosts) and it is transmitted to the intermediate host (sheep, cattle and other erbivores) by eating food contaminated with their eggs. It is also a zoonosis, so people could get infected with eggs.
The result, as you've been told, is cysts in the meat (and other organs, it tends to go to liver, lungs, brain etc) which condemn the carcass. If the meat with cysts is eaten by a canid, the parasite cycle can start again.
Other sheep won't have caught it from your ram as it needs the passage through dog/fox feces to transmit, and also if you are sure that they won't have had contact with dogs whilst with you, this sort of cysts can take months, even years to develop. I would say the ram picked the infection up before you got him.
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Thanks all,
Found several articles on a vaccination programme for ALL dogs on farms in Wales, would have been interesting to know if the farm my ram came from was participating in the scheme.
Got real worried that I'd infected the ground. Looks like a £100 down the drain and very expensive lambs when they get here in March.
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It would be worming of dogs you'd need not vaccination, though I supposed owners who vaccinate are maybe more likely to worm as well?
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If foxes count as canids could it still not come from fox poo - they do a lot of it on one of our fields (def fox not dog)?
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Yes foxes are carriers but it is the dog owners who always gets the flack. sorry about your loss
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That's interesting, yet another sheep related condition I've never heard of! My area is rife with foxes and my fields always have foxpoo on them, I also have dogs but they are all wormed. Sorry you found out the hard way - if it's any consolation I daren't add up the losses I've suffered this year .. :-\
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In order to get Echinococcus, the foxes would have to eat infected sheep carcasses. So it's controllable in the fox population in that way, even if not by worming them.
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This explains it pretty well.
http://www.totallyvets.co.nz/sheep-measles.html (http://www.totallyvets.co.nz/sheep-measles.html)
You have to have a pretty strong wormer, over here a vet prescription job.
The over the counter sort are largely a waste of time for this particular parasite.
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I believe dear can also be involved in the life cycle of this parasite
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We do have foxes and I suppose they 'may' have access to contaminated sheep carcasses as I'm surrounded by farms/smallholding that are mainly sheep orientated. There are dogs on one close by not adjacent to me but they are very conscientious and I would think they worm all theirs on a regular basis. The same with any dead sheep from my closest neighbours I'm pretty sure they are disposed of in the correct manner. But foxes travel over a wide area so I'm not sure of further afield.
We have only been here for three years and in that time having sold eleven of my own lambs and five I bought in to fatten I have not had this before. Seem strange that I buy in a ram lamb and then sell him within two months and find that he has this gid cyst. If I had kept him until next year, he might not have made it and just died in the field as the result of this gid, I would have had a postmortem carried out and then I would have thought that he had picked it up from my fields and that would have been worse.
I will contact the mart to find out where he comes from and whether there are dogs on the farm and if the farm has had anymore rejected.
Does anyone know if there is a way to trace the owner from the ear tag number... thought that was the reason for us all to ear tag our sheep so they can be traced back or is it only DEFRA that can do that.
Thanks to all of you who have contributed to this post, it's certainly been a steep learning curve and I urge anyone out there that do have dogs to make sure they are wormed on a regular basis and confined to the yard while the wormer is doing it's job so that nothing contaminates your ground.
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You cant get details of ear tags have tried when a roge ewe appeared on my holding . All info is kept by your local Trading Standards Office , you could try but mine wouldnt tell me due to many reasons .
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Good point DITW - your ram didn't have time to develop the 'measles' in his flesh on your holding, he must have arrived well infected.
You could try to get the info about his origins from the mart where you bought him, they will certainly know who brought him to them.
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It might be worth contacting Trading standards, altho they wont give out any specific info when we had a rogue wandering sheep appear in our flock they did do a bit of research and came back with whose they thought it might be (it was too!). Also bear in mind the tag could be from a number of farms back - if it is from the birth holding, it could have gone through a number of farms/owners since then. Dont talk to be about tags and traceability grrr.
However since it isnt a notifiable disease and doesnt involve a straying (in theory unauthorised movement) they might not be able to/willing to help.
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Hi
just wondering if anyone can advise me as well.
I have a lamb tlting it's head to one side, seems healthy otherwise, we were pointed to a website which indicated ear infection, been tilting its head about 2 weeks now
It had alamycin last week, 2 jabs of Strep + Pen(?) of a 3 jab course this week, but actually seems worse today. almost falling over, but that could have been exitement at bottle time, may also be getting a bit weaker if not eating just as much as she should.
I have started wonderng about Gid, but lambs were new off farm in July, and kept inside till a couple of months ago, so the only way they could have picked something up was via hay. can the eggs survive in hay and is the lamb old enough (born July) to have developed a brain cyst to cause the problem?
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Hi
just wondering if anyone can advise me as well.
I have a lamb tlting it's head to one side, seems healthy otherwise, we were pointed to a website which indicated ear infection, been tilting its head about 2 weeks now
It had alamycin last week, 2 jabs of Strep + Pen(?) of a 3 jab course this week, but actually seems worse today. almost falling over, but that could have been exitement at bottle time, may also be getting a bit weaker if not eating just as much as she should.
I have started wonderng about Gid, but lambs were new off farm in July, and kept inside till a couple of months ago, so the only way they could have picked something up was via hay. can the eggs survive in hay and is the lamb old enough (born July) to have developed a brain cyst to cause the problem?
Its not going round in circles is it ? :-\
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An ear infection could be quite slow to clear and from what know of human ear infection can be extremely painful...., making eating/chewing not much fun :-\
I don't think you can pick up any kind of worm from hay, but maybe someone else knows.
S/he may just need a bit of TLC and individual feeding?
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No she's not going round in circles. but does seem to lose her balance slightly, but presume that is because of her head tilting, or the 'giroscope' is affected by the inner ear infection.
I do bring her out of the pen so she eats her concentrates in peace, (which she wolfs down quite happily) because I noticed the bigger one swung her body across and pinned little one in corner so she couldn't get to the feeder. but with only 2 lambs that are used to being together I think the big one would be out if I tried separating them. (Big one is a bit lively, she scrambled over the pen door this morning when I wasn't quick enough with her bottle!)
I did wonder (hope?) that infection was just taking time to clear. Now I'm just hoping it happens soon.
Struggling to find the Vit B injection someone suggested, I could buy it off the internet but hoped I coud buy locally for speed, I would have been quicker ordering it!
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It was me suggested the BVits, in case it's CCN. We get CombiVit off our vet - if you don't want a whole bottle, I would have thought the vet would sell you a couple of syringes full.
(We give CombiVit to ewes who have a hard time lambing, so always buy a bottle as it will get used up here.)
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Thanks Sally, I should have gone back to the other post.
I've tried everywhere to buy either comb or intravit, finally called the vet who grudgingly sold me 2ml - £6.95!!! She kept insisting it was unlikely to be an ear infection. OH picked it up so I don't know which it is - reddish coloured?
A bottle on the internet is about £15.00 delivered.
Is this something worth getting and keeping in, will the lamb do better with another dose? and what other uses does it have? I suppose 3 jabs and it would have paid for itself!
I only have the 2 lambs and 6 goats, the Alamycin I bought is probably now out of date, though I've been told it will be just weaker.
Thanks for the advice :)
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Hmmm, not very impressed at that markup.
If I suspect CCN I give the maximum dose of BVits for each of 3 days - so yes, given your vet's charges, you would've been better to have bought a bottle.
It's a good, though not cheap, general boost in the case of any illness, and we also give a shot to any ewe who has had a difficult lambing. But with just 2 lambs you may not use up a whole bottle very quickly. Vitamins tend to have an expiry date within 12 months, and in this case they can be a lot less effective after that date, too.
The other thing I'd do in your case, but your vet maybe won't play ball, is to try to buy an opened part-used bottle from the vet at a pro-rata price.
Good luck :bouquet:
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Thanks Sally
Actually looking at the syringe again I realised it was just 1ml !!!!!!! fairly disgusted to say the least.
I'm going to order some today, if some more jabs may help that's what she'll get, but not at £7 each!
To be honest she had a bad start and has always been small, so I can't really justify vets fees, relying on farmer friend she came from. (I have offered to pay but they refused, we help them sometimes anyway).
Looking at the webpage you pointed me to I see it's a 5 day course of penicillin, I'll have to get some more off my farmer, daren't try the vet for that. I am sure it is the Verbascular disease, not circling but falls over when excited or stressed.
Sorry to hijack your thread DITW, I realise this doesn't help you, but others who are looking for similar info may recognise the alternative symptoms.
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Looking at the webpage you pointed me to I see it's a 5 day course of penicillin, I'll have to get some more off my farmer, daren't try the vet for that.
I'm sure it happens here and there to swap antibiotics between neighbours but it's actually not a good idea. Quite bad in fact. Every livestock keeper is supposed to keep a book of medications where all meds on the premises are recorded, including doses and dates of who got what. Giving antibiotics to another animal keeper is bad practice and difficult to explain in the book in case of checks. Especially in the current situation of antibiotic resistance, checks are likely to become more frequent.
Careful :bouquet:
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It's 'his' lamb (was?) and books are filled in.
BTW she actually appears fine apart from the head tilt, she was jumping round like a spring lamb yesterday, we are wondering if it's now habit, like when one gets so used to limping you carry on when the pain has gone.