[andywalt]

Ohhh so sorry to hear your news, I also have had one go down with the same yesturday...

I hope things improve for you


andy

[Padge]

after losing ours   we had to have vet last week        lost twin lambs      kept ewe      so far       had in depth chat and conclusion was that exceptionally hard winter has been particularly difficult for livestock   am sorry you have suffered loss and hope you get through rest of season problem free

[ellisr]

Ohhh so sorry to hear your news, I also have had one go down with the same yesturday...

I hope things improve for you


andy

Andy get onto it straight away calciject kept her alive but she went off her feet as she had lost far too much weight due to the dry summer then a harsh winter. Try and get her somewhere she can feed without the others so she can build up, some twin lamb drench every few hours and then fingers crossed and see what nature throws at you.
The old man is doing better not quite out of the woods yet but he can now lie down and get up without help now but he is still spending a lot of the time next to the fence where he used to lay with his friend.

[Freddiesfarm]

I find that about a month before lambing I check my ewes over and condition score them.  any triplets and any ewes with low condition scores are seperated off and fed one concentrates.  In the last 6 weeks of the pregnancy the lambs do their most intensive growing and this can be quite a strain on the ewes even if they were in good condition before hand.

I had a ewe go down with low calcium this year and we managed to save her but in previous years we have not been so lucky - ironically though she was a single in great condition!

The other thing to check for is magnesium deficiency.  Any strain can trigger this.  We never had an issue with this until we rented some extra land and made haylage from it.  When the ewes were in we were feeding the haylage and a few went down with low mag.  Turns out that area is bad for that - the farmer waited for me to find out myself!  Now that I know - I have a mag bucket out for the ewes when they are in the shed.  Fingers crossed we had no issues with it at all this year.

One last thing - any time I have a ewe or lamb under the weather I give it a shot of either multivit or intravit (Multi - does what it says on the tin - mutlivitamin and intravit is a cobalt, selenium and vitamin B booster).  These tend to kick start the sheep to recovery and cost almost nothing.