The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Sheep => Topic started by: Young Ed on May 09, 2014, 07:53:42 pm
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so the farmer i will be buying 3 lambs off later in the year to then fatten up for abattoir nearish Christmas uses hepvac p
i beleive he only normally vacs the lambs going on for breeding. do they need to b vaccinated any point in their life if i am only keeping them for this short period of time?
Cheers Ed
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No ---unlikely to be needed
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I disagree. The sort of diseases that Heptavac protects against are just the sort of things that cause sudden unexpected death in lambs.
The problem is - for three sheep - it's not worth getting a whole 50ml bottle of vaccine when you are not going to using 12ml at most. Can the farmer do the shots? Or let you have any of his surplus vaccine?
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if it makes any difference as in disease hardiness they will be Lleyn lambs
Cheers Ed
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If you are buying weaned lambs (the OP states the lambs are coming later in the year) then most of the danger times have passed for clostridial diseases
they may be susceptible to pasturella and you could vaccinate for that I guess ? But experience tells me that this doesn't always work . Next door vaccinate but still loose the same %age of lambs to pasturella as I do & I don't vaccinate
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We vaccinate and have never lost a single lamb to Pasturella or anything else. We lost one last year because it was born with a congenital defect.
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There are several types pasteurella and the vaccine doesn't immunise against all of them. I've lost a couple of lambs in the past to a different strain not included in the vaccine (always the best and strongest, alas). I always vaccinate at 12 weeks and give the second dose four weeks later, but we keep most of our lambs for breeding or sell as store lambs a couple of months after weaning.