The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: firemansam on April 23, 2013, 08:22:48 am
-
I have a 4 week old cade with bloat. He is on 3 500ml bottles a day as he wont take any more due to the bloat, my other 3 are on 650ml bottles.
I have treated him with an anti bloat, also tried olive oil which all work at that time and his tummy goes down over an hour or 2.
But the problem is it comes back every day! So I start all over again. At the moment he is having to have 5 small feeds a day but is strugling to get 1 litre in him a day.
Any ideas? Do I need to give him water/electrolytes for 24hrs,
-
Check these ideas out with others first, but you could try:
1.1 T natural yoghurt in the milk, make fresh each time otherwise it goes thick
2. giving the milk cool, the vet once told me to do that to avoid bloat dont vary the temp through that is when you get serious bloat that can kill
3. is he eating grass? can you give him less milk -that is the time when bloat ussually becomes a problem
4. talk to a vet if antibiotics or vit b would make any difference. My adult pet sheep get bloat in spring, and the vet last year said vit b can help their system prepare the right bugs to digest the grass properly after being on hay all winter.
5.small feeds often as your doing are good
Good luck
-
forgot: yes electrolytes are a good break to settle the stomach follow the instructions. Also dont vary the strength of the milk mix, you may possibly need to weaken it a bit if he is eating plenty grass or lamb pellets
-
What else he having besides the milk?
-
What milk is it you have yours on? I use one that's 1L (max) per lamb per day, I know of some that are 1.5L (max) but sounds like you are wanting to feed 2L per lamb per day?
Yes give him natural (live) yoghurt mixed in his milk :thumbsup: - nature's remedy ;)
If that doesn't do the trick you can try a bit of bicarb of soda - be warned it can make them erupt from both ends rather spectacularly! :o :D
-
I would agree with Sally re amount of milk being given, ours get about 350ml per feed, if any signs of bloat were seen I would immediately look to reduce the amount of milk per feed much further and consider weaning of milk altogether once over 4 weeks old and eating creep. We lost one at 41/2 weeks old to bloat last year, his twin also suffered from bloat too and got weaned, didn't want to risk losing both of them. Some lambs just must be more susceptible, this is the first time we have seen it and have reared a lot of cades.
Powdered ginger is also reputed to help with milder cases of bloat.
Sally I hadn't realised the effect of bicarb! We add a small amount of bicarb to the milk of any lambs that are prone to scour a bit and had found the opposite effect! Perhaps its down to quantity?
We also add live yogurt to lamlac, we did this as routine this year, we made it go further by adding either goats or sheeps milk to a litre of lamlac and keeping it warm for a few hours so that more yogurt was made, about a 1/5 of this was added to each 2L of lamlac made up. The 17 cade lambs we have reared all seem to have done well on it with no hint of any bloat.
-
Put a tea spoon of castor oil in its milk, you will have a new lamb in 24 hours
-
Co-incidentally 1 of my lambs is starting to suffer, he’s greedy and gulps at the bottle till its empty. So I’ve followed this with interest and hopefully he’ll survive. This may be of interest and supports the comments above.
http://www.ngahiwifarms.co.nz/cms/images/downloads/managing-abomasal-bloat.pdf (http://www.ngahiwifarms.co.nz/cms/images/downloads/managing-abomasal-bloat.pdf)
-
they are grazing in our back garden, and nibble a little creep, but only very little. We are feeding lamblac milk.
It says max 1.5l per day so I will reduce them down a bit, but the one with bloat rarely gets near that. I will also try the natural yogurt.
thanks
-
If that doesn't do the trick you can try a bit of bicarb of soda - be warned it can make them erupt from both ends rather spectacularly! :o :D
Sally, How much bicarb of soda and how do you deliver it please (mixed in with the milk?)
Thanks for the tips, this one could be the last resort !!
-
I got my info originally from one of jaykay's posts - here (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/index.php?topic=28720.msg285334#msg285334) 'tis.
Oh, and here (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/index.php?topic=26356.msg258002#msg258002)'s my story of applying these remedies successfully to a 4-month old weaned calf.
-
Thanks for the links, I need to do something so it'll be the oil and Bi-Carb, will let you know how it goes.
Good luck firemansam as well. Its worse than having kids !!
-
24 hours on and what a difference, he’s gone from a beer barrel to his normal self. Dosed him last night and this morning was greeted with hungry bleating, judging from the smell and mess there were some dramatic movements through the night !!
In case it helps someone searching .
After reading everyone’s advice/links and being desperate, I mixed up this dose for the 4 week old ram lamb.
5 ml. of veg. oil +5ml. of castor oil mixed and syringed/drenched, followed by 1 teaspoon of Bicarb’ of Soda dissolved in a small volume of water and again syringe drenched in 20 ml.
I'll also put Natural Yogurt in the milk untill weaned, hopefully this will end the Bloat problem
-
Great news :thumbsup: - thanks for letting us know, and for detailing exactly what you gave him. :-*
-
glad someone listens to the Irish Shepherd!!