[feldar]

Had four cases of listeria in the last month.
All started with a ewe lamb who was cudding badly. We thought it was just a bit of bad breeding cause we haven't had a cudder in years. Then her ear started to droop down and she had a raging temperature.
We treated with antibiotics and checked her mouth for a tooth abscess. Nothing, anyway she made improvement and slowly got better with some more antibiotics.
Then this last week we saw another big ram lamb same symptoms dooping ears cudding walking into things we immediately looked through all our books and rang our vet and we all came to the conclusion it was either CCN or listeria so we gave vitamin jabs and antibiotics plus a painkiller.and he started to make progress all be it slowly. These are big strong 7 month old lambs
We have since had two more cases which we caught really early and we now are sure it's Listeria. Apparently birds and vermin can bring it to the feeders, it can't be silage or haylage cause we are not feeding that this time of year.
We have a friend in Somerset who also had two similar cases but he had to destroy them when they went downhill fast. I think we caught ours early enough.
I do wonder if the weather has any effect on the bacterium multiplying we have had alternately hot cold then wet and warm not a usual summer at all, very strange.
So we are keeping a close watch. thankfully it's only in one isolated paddock so far and not in our breeding ewes or show stock   we are quarenting that paddock as much as possible but you can't stop birds from moving around so we will just have to hope we've seen the last case.

[Hazelwood Flock]

That's interesting, I have a ewe lamb who has drooped an ear and is spilling cud on the same side. She has been enthusiastically scoffing cake every day so I assumed it was a mini stroke rather than anything infection wise, never thought of taking her temperature. Does antibiotic treatment recover the drooping and dribbling or will the lamb now be doomed to the freezer? 

[SteveHants]

Hmmmm, I had one go down with something I couldn't quite put my finger on last week....


however, I'm not feeding them anything.

[feldar]

Our fisrt ewe lamb has recovered completely no cudding now or droopy ear, the boy is taking a long while to get right.
In our sheep book one of the symptoms of the nervous kind of Listeria is paralysis of the one side of the face, hence the cudding. Everyone of ours has done this so far.
I do wonder if this awful weather is playing a part in an outbreak but i have never seen this before in our sheep and we don't feed that much, just a bit of creep to finish butchers lambs. but the crows do get in the feeders so it may be them also pheasants steal a bit from our feeders. I don't know if birds carry this naturally anyway.
We will shear off the lambs soon, so the ewe that cudded will hopefully tidy up a bit, she looks manky with cud all down her.
 

[Dougal]

Listeria is a really tough one. Can really do a lot of harm in a flock, it'll cause abortion in pregnant ewes. Well done on catching it early.
 I take it you are feeding these lambs? Could the contamination be in the feed shed rather than in the field? (rats etc) It is very difficult to trace listeria though because of the very small innoculation rate. For an e.coli outbreak each victim normally needs 10's of thousands of individual bacterim to cause sickness. Samonella is 100's while listeria is only 10-50 individual bacterium!! Thankfully it's rare!
What antibiotic are you using? Worth knowing incase I need it in the future. Hope you get on top of the problem soon.

[feldar]

No, can't be from shed cause we don't have one! at the moment while we wait for the barn to be built we buy only what we need for feeding every two days and feed it straight away, also all the food is cleared up by the lambs very quickly, so no mouldy food about.
I googled listeria as well, and it says game birds or just birds in general can be a problem. we do have a rook problem here and they do poo in the water tubs so that may be a source of infection. Quite how to stop this i don't know.
We are also being careful for ourselves cause it's zoonotic.
It's a pain in the bum!
Just one more thing to sort out, who would have sheep; must be mad

[Dougal]

Have you tried hanging a couple rooks (dead) on posts around the feeders and water troughs? never looks great but if it stops them coming in about it might save a life?

[VSS]

Do you have a problem with moles? Soil is the commonest source of listeria.

[Welshcob]

We are also being careful for ourselves cause it's zoonotic.

Feldar, be really careful because it IS a zoonosis. Mostly people get it from contaminated food, but if you know it's on the farm caution is never enough.

See this link:
http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/51400.htm

It's mostly heavy vetty stuff that could send you to sleep but quite useful to know epidemiology, symptoms and treatment + zoonosis aspects.

Hope it gets better 
 

[feldar]

Thanks for help guys
We are being really careful with the hygiene aspect of this and i'm not taking the dogs on farm either just in case.
We could hang some dead rooks up  i will ask hubby to take the gun out.
VSS i haven't seen any moles, i never thought of that. They would be active about now i think but the ground is alternately hard then soft here with this dumb weather!
We did flood badly in the spring early summer with all that rain so whether that brought any more likelyhood of this occurring i don't know.
I think it's just bad luck  we seem to have caught it early so i'm hoping no more cases.
I'm steadily working my way through every sheep disease   we have  always had a really healthy flock up till now, wonder what's next to bite us on the ass
Sorry meant to say we are using Pen/Strep LA at the moment with Cronixin and a multivitamin jab just to cover for  what we initially thought was CCN. We carried on giving that as it may give them a boost and vet said can't do any harm giving it.

[feldar]

Just to prove its not all bad, here's our winning ram lamb from New Forest show

[Bramblecot]

I knew you would wear a hat to your wedding .  Thanks for letting me know about another new disease to worry about .  Hope things improve and good luck with the showing 

[feldar]

Just a quick update, saw vet today who said she has seen quite a few cases about the area this last month. If we have one more case she wants us to treat the whole flock with antibiotics   i thought this was a bit overkill but then she's a vet and i'm not, so i will do as i'm told. Here's hoping we have no more.
I don't know how many there are of us down this way but be vigilant we know of one more confirmed case in Somerset but forewarned is forearmed as they say.

[Fronhaul]

I had a case earlier in the year.  The ram lamb concerned came home from a show the other day with a third prize rosette so don't despair.

[Hazelwood Flock]

I haven't treated my ewe lamb with anything as apart from a droopy ear and cud dribble on one side she is well and happy. She looks to me like she is improving by herself so will just keep  an eye on her.