[tommytink]

Got sheep back to lambing shed on Saturday. Went down this morning and we have a dead lamb. First one and it’s dead. Aside from feeling responsible, what should we do for the ewe now? She’s calling for it but has eaten some cake. I know courses advised milking her colostrum off but she seems pretty distressed I’m more worried about that. She also has a long string hanging, presumably this is the afterbirth. Is this okay to be dragging the floor? I think I should let it come out naturally, vet on course said it could take a couple of days in some cases. Any advice appreciated as always.

[twizzel]

You could foster a lamb onto her but to be honest you’ve probably missed the boat on that one. So I would cut her feed down, give her only straw and a bit of hay to eat, and let her milk dry up. The stringy bit will be afterbirth- it should come away this morning but if it doesn’t give the vet a ring. Don’t pull it yourself. Sadly lambing is not always cute lambs there are a lot that don’t make it. I am nearly finished my sheep, I too had a set of small dead triplets and sadly lost a ewe too. But you need to not linger on this one and focus on the ewes next to deliver. Good luck 

[tommytink]

Thanks Twizzel. I appreciate not everything will survive but because this was the first one it’s pretty depressing. It’s been the toughest time of our lives starting afresh and it sometimes feels like if it can go wrong it will, no matter how many times I tell myself to keep on going!

My OH said lamb was on the floor in the birthing mess and didn’t look like it had moved at all, so he thinks it was maybe born dead. She had cleaned it off. So sad for her. The afterbirth has come out now. Should we try and clean her up a bit?

[twizzel]

If you want to but I wouldn’t worry to be honest. The lamb could have been presented wrong and died during the lambing process    now you’ve had the first lamb I would increase your checks on the sheep, only last night I had a ewe start lambing at 11pm, by 1am she had lambed the first which was up and sucking but the second was coming back wards, if I hadn’t found her then the lamb most probably would have died :-(

[tommytink]

She was due tomorrow. The next one was due Thurs but we now think she isn’t pregnant. So the next one isn’t till Sun. I wake in the night all the time anyway and am kicking myself for not checking on them earlier.

I’ve looked on other posts as well and like you say it says don’t let her have good grazing. We have a field we were saving to turn them out onto. We were going to let them in there now during the days and gather them in for the nights as they only have access to hay and their ration of cake. We thought it’d help keep the indoor area a bit cleaner as well. Not sure if that’s best or not, but with the gap we have it’s a long time for them to be stuck on the yard. Either way I guess we shouldn’t put her on the green grass now but on poorer grazing? We have plenty of that thanks to the weather. Was thinking about putting her and our two presumed-empties in with the Badgers maybe, and split the ram off (he’d be in an adjacent field so not without contact with other sheep). Just trying to do what’s best all the time.

[bj_cardiff]

I wouldn't take the 'due dates' so literally, they can go a week either side.

Sorry to hear your bad news. Its never easy and particularly hard when you have a perfectly healthy lamb that is dead for no apparent reason. I've had two this year. The first was a young ewe and she'd cleaned it up but it was dead. The second was another young ewe that was taking ages to lamb so I assisted, lamb came out fine and was alive but I couldn't get him to take a breath of air (even tried mouth to mouth - which was pretty gross). Its the first I've ever had like that. Luckily for the ewe she had a second healthy lamb.
I would keep your ewe in with the others so you can keep an eye on her. Don't milk her at all, if you do it will encourage her to produce more milk. Check her bag daily for any hardness (mastitus). Feed her hay and water, no nuts.

[tommytink]

Just checked her over. Her bag wasn’t hot or hard. I have milked off that colostrum (not purposefully ignoring your advice bj, only just seen your post) because a) it will be useful to have it if needed and b) I didn’t want her to feel swollen or uncomfortable. I didn’t empty her out, and I won’t do it again, but I will check on her daily.

If I let the remaining pregnant sheep graze the “good” field during the day, and bring them in at night, I can’t let her go with them as it’ll be too good a diet and encourage the milk. Right? And I can’t leave her in the yard by herself. I could put her with the other two presumed-empties who we were going to stick in with the Badgers (although this could be a problem when we feed the Badgers the cake). Their field is poor but we have nowhere else they can go (saving them a field to lamb in) so are feeding hay and cake and they have a mineral bucket. This year has just been a nightmare 

[SallyintNorth]

I have successfully adopted lambs onto bereaved ewes after a week, so you have definitely not missed the boat on that.  Giving her a lamb is the best thing for her, emotionally and physiologically. 

[SallyintNorth]

   It is often the case that whatever problems one is going to have come at the start of lambing, so don't get despondent, it will pick up 

I see she's cleansed now  .  My experience is that if they don't cleanse within 12 hours they benefit from antibiotics.  I am someone who shouts out about not using antibiotics willy-nilly, but a ewe that doesn't cleanse promptly is a case where it's better safe than sorry.  And especially when there's a dead lamb; we don't know why it didn't live, but it could be that whatever that was has also laid the ewe low.

As you don't know why it didn't live, I would be scrupulous about cleaning up and make sure no other sheep come into contact with any foetal material or straw that was soiled, etc.  Get all the clothes you were wearing in the wash too, and scrub down the pen and hurdles etc. 

[Fleecewife]

Why do you think that two of your ewes are empty?  Were they scanned?  We don't scan and sometimes we have ewes who don't look in lamb at all, then one day out pops a lamb! What I'm saying is that if you're not positive they are not in lamb, don't cut their feed to a bare field.  We tend to just wait and if by a few days after the last possible date of lambing (counting from when the tups came out) there's no lamb, then we judge her empty.  In 24 years we have only had a couple of genuinely empty ewes, and they have lambed in subsequent years. If your ewes are empty and have been eating with the in-lamb ewes then they may be a bit tubby by the end  but there's plenty of time for them to get back to normal before tupping time.
If your ewe with the dead lamb was still retaining her placenta after 2 days, then we would give an antibiotic - not a general one that you might keep in stock, but a specific one prescribed by the vet.  This would cover her until she does cleanse. I see that she has cleansed now, so info for next time.

Cheer up, losing your first lamb is so sad, and you feel for the ewe, but she will stop grieving, usually a couple of days after birthing.  Once you have live lambs bouncing around, that little dead lamb will just be a small black spot in your memory 


Cross posted with Sally, slightly different times suggested for giving antiBs, just go by what your vet suggests.

[twizzel]

Her bag won’t be full immediately after lambing, but it will become firmer in the next few days- and it’s this fullness that tells her to stop producing milk. I had a ewe abort her triplets last Wednesday night, I stripped about a litre from her when she lambed as I had a set of quads that needed a bit more colostrum, but since then I haven’t touched her udder. It is hard and full but doesn’t have mastitis, she is in a pen with hay/straw to eat- isolated from the rest until we take bloods to find out why she aborted.


As said due dates can vary- be ready for lambs from about 142 days. This year the earliest I had lambs was a set of quads at 142 days and a set of twins at 149 days.

[tommytink]

I got about 200ml out of her. Not done it before but watched a good YouTube video and worked it out from there.

She just keeps calling for it. Feel so bad for her and guilty myself. Just have it in my head if I’d been there it wouldn’t have turned out that way. Doesn’t help when someone (not on here) says she may have needed help 

I’ve cleaned out all the dirty straw, limed the affected area of the floor, and put fresh straw down. It was a communal area, we have pens for mothering up but obvs didn’t get that far.

We don’t think the other two are in lamb as the ram returned to them both. We’ve had to keep him in as we had no company for him and didn’t feel it right to keep him by himself. He went back to one a month later. Fair enough, but then he went back to her on Saturday as well. The other one he went back to in January. So something else that didn’t work out very well to add to our long list!! Also when I look at their vulvas they aren’t at all baggy-looking or swollen, they’re a lot more tucked up. So this is why I think they’re not. We didn’t get them scanned as we were going to take them to a neighbouring farm to get them done but it ended up they didn’t confirm to us a date/time and didn’t answer their phone when we tried to call to see if it was going ahead. In other words another screw up. This year we’ll be sorting our own scanning out!

[SallyintNorth]

Have you tried to get her a lamb?  Local lamb bank, local farmers?

[twizzel]

You could always try a foster lamb but be prepared to bottle feed it if she rejects it. I skinned one of my triplets and tried to foster another lamb on wearing the skin but my ewe rejected it- and kept calling for her own lamb. Last year I succeeded with another ewe... it’s a bit pot luck.

[SallyintNorth]

My experience differs.  In general I have found that a bereaved ewe will take a foster without too much trouble.  Setting a second lamb onto a ewe which has lost one of a pair, now that is a different kettle of fish altogether and I no longer attempt that; even when you get it to work, you too often find the fostered lamb doesn't do as well because she always favours her natural child, and you often find that in fact the fostered child is pinching from other ewes, which is not in anybody's interests.

With a bereaved ewe, it certainly helps to rub the foster into the birth fluids and the dead lamb (make sure you get the smell onto the top of its head, and under and over the top of its tail), and having the dead lamb's skin as a jacket can help too.   (Leave the anus and tail on the skin if you can bear too - it does help.)  But even when you don't have all those things, you can usually get her to take a foster with a little patience.  Support feeds - hold the ewe steady, gently but firmly, while the lamb gets a bellyful - until one day you find the lamb isn't hungry