[ellisr]

I now have a ewe with it. It seems a bit more common this year even though I have been given extra food as the winter has been hard the sheep fell out of condition and now she has gone wobbly on her legs and she is really big with lambs hopefully she will lamb this week we are giving her everything and just praying she goes into labour. The treacle eggs and milk always seems to give her a boost

[Madcow]

oh fingers crossed over here too, the joy and the heartbreak animals can give  your doing the best you can so take heart X

[lachlanandmarcus]

after her treatment our ewe will now eat grass (altho still not sheep nuts) and so we are still giving her lamb milk replacer in the evening to give her some protein/fats etc. She has slipped one of the lambs so we are hoping this will help her recover. Just would like her to start eating hard feed again.

[shep53]

Nice grass will be far better for her than nuts its what the stomach is designed for if you have any ivy try her with it

[jaykay]

Does your feedstore stock flake? Ours will sometimes eat that - loads of molasses I think! - when they won't eat plain nuts. I think you're right to try to get some hard feed into her - yes spring grass would be nice but it's months away here yet at least.

[Fleecewife]

We have in the past used a kind of porage given orally by giant syringe.  Made up by cooking coarse mix - or pencils would be smoother- in water with added glucose and a bit of salt or some digestive biscuits, into a thick but slightly runny mixture.  The syringe is a catheter tipped 50ml one, the kind used with a tube for lambs, so it has a large outlet.  I syringe this down a few mls at a time, a few times a day, as many syringes full as she will take.  It gets the rumen going again - could add some yoghurt for that - but bypasses the need for her to have an appetite.  Tempting greens are good too, especially willow tips if you have any.  Digestives on their own can be tempting too, as they have crunch, plus sugar, salt and a bit of fibre - you might have to push small pieces into her mouth the first few times, but once they are getting better they love them.

[ellisr]

I have what might be a silly question ... I have got some Calciject I know how much to give but need to know if this is a one off injection or is it to be repeated if she doesn't pick up?

[Fleecewife]

Well, it's a four-off injection really as you give it in four places  .  We have never had to give more than one dose - as soon as the ewe is up we start on the porage stuff and ours have improved, although sometimes they might die later, a few months after lambing.  On the other hand we have a 16 yo 4 horned Heb ewe who collapsed after her last lambing 3 years ago, when she unfortunately had twins, but had started losing her teeth.  After Calciject and the porage and lots of extra feeding she reared the twins (one was always minute and eventually went as a companion to a goat and was called Dwarf but is still on the go too).  She is now positively fat, having been kept as an unbred pet purely for her fleece and old times sake - looks like she'll go on for a few more years yet unless she finds herself a tup. 

Whenever we have had twin lamb disease it's been with older ewes who have started losing their teeth.  We always check before we put them with the tup, but winter feeding can be hard on the teeth so they can start to lose them once they are already in lamb.  Once all the front teeth have finally fallen out they can manage much better than when they had wobbly stumps.

Good luck with your ewe - try her with the digestive biscuits too

[Rosemary]

Ours love oatcakes - so if they don't like digestives, try them. Not as sweet mind.

[ellisr]

I have gave her it in 5 places as it said 50ml and I only had a 10ml syringe, she is still eating fine and has had twin lamb drench. She is walking slow and wobbly but is alert and loving the cuddles. She now has a lot of milk in and I am praying she lambs soon to take the pressure off. I checked her teeth and couldn't find and missing but she is not happy when you go in her mouth so it is a very quick check. She is loosing a lot of weight now just wish the devil lambs would come out so we can get her back to her cheeky self.
I think she is going into retirement after this is over

[lachlanandmarcus]

Our ewe has rejected the digestive biscuits; she seems to think that I will hand feed her dock leaves all day, which she seems to love. Trouble is, she's probably right....

[landroverroy]

 It's much more important to get her to eat roughage than hard food. It is vital to get her rumen functioning again - hence the rumen contents from the vet.
 As already mentioned, ivy is excellent for encouraging a ruminant to eat. I've often found they'll eat a few leaves of that and then start on their hay again. If she still won't eat hay then try her on any roughage - whatever you feed the horses on, sugar beet pulp, anything so long as it's high in fibre.
 Several people have recommended high energy buckets. These are excellent as the sheep can get as much energy as she needs from them without having to fight for it. There is now one actually called a twin lamb bucket and I've never had any metabolic problems since using it.
 Anyway - good luck with your ewe and keep feeding the dock leaves if that's what she wants!

[Tam]

I have a ewe who had triplets on monday - it was her first lambing.  She seemed fine for nearly 24 hrs and we stomach tubed collostrum into the lambs to make sure they had the best chance.  However, she has gone down hill rapidly - severe diarrhoea, she's not interested in eating anymore, she can just about get to her feet but hasn't got the energy to stay up.  She is showing all the signs of ketosis, except she has already lambed - does anyone know if this is still possible?  I have given her some twin lamb drench anyway.

She has already killed one of the triplets by lying on it.

[VSS]

according to our vet she will almost certainly abort the lambs   following which you have a 50% chance of the ewe surviving    tho a much more experienced friend of ours insists that the odds are against you at the first signs     which is really gutting

They certainly are more likely to make it if the abort the lambs - but I would suggest that for "true" twin lamb, the survival rate is possibly as low as 1 in 10.

We had a major problem with this in a flock we were shepherding about 18 years ago. In the autumn, just before tupping, the flock size had been reduced from 450 to 350. This meant that there was loads more grass than normal so a much higher proportion of twins than normal were conceived. Then the winter weather was really awful, rained every day from Christmas until the 3rd March, and as a mountain flock run on a low input system, they were not given any supplementary feeding. Coupled with the fact that we were unaware of the high number of twins (pre scanning days)we had ewes dropping like flies from Twin Lamb from about 2 week before lambing. We lost almost 40 ewes. More than 10% of the flock. It was totally demoralising - no-one's fault, just caused by a set of cirumstances that we couldn't really forsee.

The ones that aborted their lambs were the ones who survived.

Thankfully now that we have a better system and we scan, we rarely have a case. I think we have had perhaps one with a touch of toxaemia in the last five years - and we lamb about 180 ewes each spring.

[Blacksheep]

Tam have you injected calciject - giving this is very urgent in your ewes condition - this has magnesium as well as calcium, have you spoken to your vet?