[Tiva Diva]

I'd be grateful for any advice/shared experience on this. 8 of my 18 Portland ewes are yeld (not in lamb) on ultrasound scanning. It's the first time that tup has been used, but he can't be infertile as the other ewes are in lamb. He even seem to have jumped the gun (and the fence  ) and tupped a couple of my mules early in the autumn! He could be subfertile I suppose, but he's been in with the girls until we scanned them last Monday, so I would have thought he'd have got them at a later cycle.
Half the yeld ewes are gimmers and the rest one-crops. Of my mule ewes, only one out of 28 is yeld (they were with a different tup, but otherwise have been mixing with the Portlands the rest of the time. The Portlands are in good condition and haven't been ill (except one who got an abscess from a dog bite, but that was back in September), they've been treated for fluke and vaccinated against clostridium etc.
I'm getting the tup's fertility tested next week, but I'm scratching my head a bit here 

[thenovice]

SBD?

[lachlanandmarcus]

I was thinking Schmallenburg? Did the scanner say whether they were empty as in not been in lamb or whether they had lost the lamb, I think they can tell (sometimes anyway). Either could be Schmallenburg but losing the lamb especially so.

[Tiva Diva]

Could be Schmallenberg, though the tups didn't go in until quite late in the year. The scanner man didn't say if they'd ever been in lamb. But I don't see why that shoul affect the Portlands so much more than the mules, or indeed the ewes (mostly Blackies and mules) on the neighbouring farms, unless Portlands are particularly susceptible to it.

[colliewoman]

Did your tup get a dose of orf or anything that could have brewed a temperature?
They can be sterile for 6 weeks after so if he did have something after servicing part of your flock, that could explain why so many have missed?

[Anke]

I spoke to Jonathan Guy of Animal health last week re getting our grass etc tested, and he was saying that due to the lower level of certain minerals etc in the ground as a result of the wet weather, and some minerals more likely to be locked up (we didn't go into great detail) lower conception rates were experienced. Now I don't know if this is lower fertility in the male or just the girls not catching....
 
I think lower fertility due to Schmallenberg would be a possibility if you had it last year, but fortunately it hasn't (yet) been reported in lambs up here...

[Marches Farmer]

I'm hearing more reports of farms that had SBV pass through and affect last lambing finding a much higher than expected barren rate this scanning.  I think there's more to learn about how SBV affects rams' and ewes' fertility.

[Tiva Diva]

Well, the tup was tested today, and he's fertile. We know he was fertile in September: we've had Portland x mule lambs born on Saturday (not deliberate - he jumped the gun). The vet thinks the most likely problem is that he had an illness/injury that transiently reduced his fertility and/or libido. He can't find any obvious cause for infertility in the ewes. So the tup gets a reprieve, and we have a cunning plan for this year's tupping! We'll sponge the ewes again, but after 3 weeks in with the Portland we'll move them in with the mules and the Beltex tup. That way, if there are any more empty ewes, we'll know who to blame!

[Marches Farmer]

Yup, odd things are happening this year.  I can't remember the last time we had a barrener (what we call yeld in these parts) but this year we had three.  When I was going through my raddle dates and transferring them to this year's lambing calendar I noticed they were all tupped on the same day.  The ones tupped on the day before and the day after all held, though.  Most odd!

We've had mineral buckets out with the breeding stock since October, including the 2012 lambs we'll be keeping for breeding.  I don't know if it's helping but it makes me feel I'm doing something positive to balance the dilution of minerals in this sodden ground.

[VSS]

I think that there are far too many people blaming everything on Schmallenburg when the same problem could be caused by all sorts of other things.

My first thought would be toxoplasmosis - infection at tupping time can cause failure to hold to the ram and can temporarily reduce fertility of the tup. The fact that all your ewes are young would also be indicative of a potential toxo infection.

[Anke]

It will be interesting to see what the barren rates will be in Scotland (no Schmallenberg  ) against England. Mine aren't scanned, but I have had a couple of repeat-tuppers, so no idea if they held finally or not...

[SteveHants]

I think that there are far too many people blaming everything on Schmallenburg when the same problem could be caused by all sorts of other things.

My first thought would be toxoplasmosis - infection at tupping time can cause failure to hold to the ram and can temporarily reduce fertility of the tup. The fact that all your ewes are young would also be indicative of a potential toxo infection.

This makes more sense to me.


Many cats about?

[Blacksheep]

Your scanner should be able to tell you whether there was an increase in barren rates in your area this year. Our scanner had certainly seen significantly higher levels than normal in our area for earlier lambing flocks,  this increase is not likely to be explained by the 'usual' problems such as toxo, other explanations have been the rain and mineral leaching.   Always lots of factors to consider,  we had a small number barren at scanning that we did not expect and a few ewes with multiples in the process of absorbing a lamb, so certainly and unusual scanning, however we have had a large number of ewes with triplets so I am not sure that mineral deficiency is the problem.  Was expecting some SBV problems at lambing but so far out of 33 lambs born all have been born healthy and are thriving and certainly no late abortions etc indicating abortion disease.   Hoping the rest of the flock lamb healthy lambs and if SBV was the cause it went through the flock at a stage that the ewes lost the lambs rather than got deformed lambs. The lack of information about the effect of SBV is frustrating, including the effect on ram fertility whilst the virus is active.

[VSS]

The lack of information about the effect of SBV is frustrating, including the effect on ram fertility whilst the virus is active.

It's worth remembering that anything that causes a ram's body temperature to be raised during tupping can potentially have a temporary adverse effect on his fertility.

[Tiva Diva]

Thanks for all the comments. Toxoplasmosis is a possibility, but there aren't any cats about where the sheep are, and it still wouldn't explain why 8 out of 18 of the Portlands are empty but only 1 out of 47 of the mules are: they were in different fields when the tups were in with them, but they'd all been in those fields as a single group before and since. There has been an increase in yeld ewes in our area generally, but that's largely been ascribed to fluke and/or poor condition, neither of which applied to our girls.
Our vet goes along with VSS, and thinks the tup had some illness which temporarily affected his fertility. We shall see!