[kanisha]

Hi any ideas  I have a ewe due to lamb in around a month looking at her maybe a little longer; The grass here has been comming in for about two weeks interspersed with snow hail sleet and rain which has made it hard to juggle everything she has had a green back side ( wormed fluked and vaccinated prior to having a green backside. ) I brought her in during the last  snow storm as she looked to be finding it tough - just quite slow and not out with the others I haven't  treated her for anything just  dry comfy bed and no fresh green grass she has dried up is eating and quite content but whilst checking her tonight  noticed that when handled she has a very watery belly, sounds just like shes got a few pints of water sloshing around is this anything I should be worrying about?

she will only have a single lamb

[fsmnutter]

Hi there
As a vet, I would think that there are a couple of potential reasons for sounding like having a sloshy belly.
Firstly, if she is getting close to lambing, they can have a condition where they produce excess birthing fluids, and so would have a very large, fluid filled uterus, with a lamb somewhere within it, which may slosh a bit.
Another reason for having fluid in the abdomen would be a loss of protein from the blood, causing fluid to leak out of the blood vessels as there is too little protein to trap it in the vessels, this can be caused by heavy bouts of diarrhoea, or fluke damaging the liver, and with her having had a green bum and having been treated for worms and fluke, this is a potential.
There are other things that could be going on, but I think the most likely from her history would be the second option, that she's lost some protein, but you've done the treatments required - ie worming, fluking and taking off the grass in case that's caused the scours. As long as she's eating, drinking and looking comfortable, I would just keep an eye on her. It may be that the sloshing sorts itself out, or it may have to wait until she lambs.
If she goes off colour, off her food, off her legs, or anything else unusual, I would get the vet to take a look, otherwise I think a bit of TLC would do her just fine.
Hope that helps
Suzanne

[kanisha]

Hi that makes some sense. I have heard of ewes carrying schmallenberg lambs having  excessive amounts of fluid, but am happy to content myself with another explanation for the moment  for lambing   thank you. 

[kanisha]

Update I decided to treat the ewe more agressively and gave covering antibiotics plus probiotic and what they call a "pansement" here ( dressing) of kaolin to line the gut 24 hours later no sloshy belly and the ewe is gently cudding. Not sure when she will go back out as its nigh on impossible to work out the grass situation at the moment but shes happy in