[Abigail]

Hi Guys,

My male ram has had all sorts of problems since arriving here but he it seems as though he is finally on the mend.

We sheared him by hand a couple of weeks ago but he is losing wool pretty bad! One of the ewes had scab and she had lost a lot of wool so we treated everyone with Ivermectin. She is doing well now and everyone else looks pretty good too.

As you can see from the pics this guy is really patchy and it keeps getting worse. The wool is coming away right down to the skin underneath. He seems bothered by it as well, like kicking up and running about the pen. When he was doing this before we found a tick on him but we gave him a really good once over yesterday and couldn't find anything. Any ideas what might be causing wool loss like this?

I was planning on treating him with a second dose of Ivermectin today. He also just seems a little down and depressed but he has been so poorly for the last two months on and off that his behavior isn't necessarily anything out of the ordinary.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and advice
Thanks!

[lachlanandmarcus]

The wool loss is probably due to the stress if being poorly. The wet weather this year has also cause more wool slip. If the skin underneath is healthy and not sore, and fuzz grows back, and he's treated for the underlying problems, then I wouldn't worry about the fleece as an issue in isolation,

[Foobar]

If he is being bothered by it then I would say that you still have a problem, either scab or lice.
When you say ivermectin, what product are you using?  I think the ivermectin ones need two injections 7 days apart to treat scab.


Have you checked for lice too? (they can often have both) - you would be able to see them with the naked eye.

[SteveHants]

Looks like there is shorter wool coming underneath.


If I didn't know any better, I'd say it looked a lot like one of my easycares - what breed of sheep is it?

[Abigail]

Yes there is shorter wool coming underneath, we are based in Spain so the weather is pretty good but we have still had a lot of rain this year.

The skin underneath looks ok, sometimes a little red. No scab though and also no lice that we can see. I think we will go ahead a treat him again with the ivermectin.

We are not sure what bread he is. He has been under a lot of stress from being ill so that has likely contributed to the situation.

Thanks everyone for your replies!

[Ladygrey]

We had something similar in February this year, a Lleyn cross texel shedded his entire fleece off down to the skin!

He didnt have scab, mites, lice or anything, we could have only put it down to stress of some sort, he was however freezing freezing cold and would curl up in a ball shivering, so we slung a dog jacket on him wich he wore until March (constantly checking it and re adjusting) when he had a small bit of wool growth so we took it off him!

[Tala Orchard]

We have one doing the same thing and my sister in law (a crofter for over 40yrs) said not to worry as it can be a result of this bad winter and poor weather it sometimes effects older sheep and they can drop their fleece. As there is no Scab or lice infestation I would put it down to poor condition caused by the poor weather this year even in Spain I understand the winter was worse than normal this year.

Tala

[SteveHants]

Yes there is shorter wool coming underneath, we are based in Spain so the weather is pretty good but we have still had a lot of rain this year.

The skin underneath looks ok, sometimes a little red. No scab though and also no lice that we can see. I think we will go ahead a treat him again with the ivermectin.

Do they have hair sheep in spain (I bet they do!)? Skin underneath looking red is like 40% or so of my woolshedders - it happens sometimes - I think it is sunburn.


Can you show us a pic of the whole sheep? I'm still erring towards it being a hairsheep of some kind, in which case there is nothing wrong with it.