[sarahdean_66]

I had a ewe lamb today, one nice ewe lamb. But 2 dead other lambs pulled out (one had head bk) both had deformed eyes, not opened properly and thick fibrous tissue over them. Also deformed jaws and tongues all twisted up. Both were abit smaller than the live ewe but other than tht fairly normal. Vet thinks it sounds like sbv is there anything else it could be? Thanks

[fsmnutter]

Without testing, its hard to say for sure.
I've certainly seen aborted lambs that come out looking dried up, with strange looking eyes and mouth because they're dried and the ewe has started reabsorbing fluids from them.
You can get deformities, such as long or short bottom jaws, and this may be genetic, may be due to the ewe being exposed to some toxin or disease during pregnancy. Deformities are not uncommon in multiple births, perhaps due to there being less nutrition and space to go around.
From one ewe, particularly as she's had one live lamb, I wouldn't expect it is a flock problem, just one of those things.
I certainly wouldn't be jumping to say schmallenberg unless you have more than one ewe with deformed lambs, and it tends to show more as fusing of leg joints and twisting of spine.
I think sometimes vets in a SBV area jump to thinking of this without remembering that before SBV, there were always a few deformed lambs born a year.
I lambed in the Scottish Borders in 2009 and had several with arthrogryposis (leg joints fused at awkward angles) and this was before SBV, and there is still no SBV in the borders, so it must have been something else.
Hope that helps
Suzanne

[Marches Farmer]

Did you vaccinate?  We had one the year before the vaccine was available and sent it for testing, which was inconclusive, but a lot of local farmers had odd lambs that year and our vet thought that either the test wasn't accurate enough or there was a lot more variation in the type of deformity it produced than had originally been thought.  Tests last year indicated that most of the sheep in the West Country had been infected, so it's clearly spread.  Key is when in the pregnancy the ewe is infected.  We now vaccinate, as the UK is at the edge of the midge range.  If it's endemic then all sheep will have been infected before breeding age and you don't have to worry.  Being on the edge means they might ..... or they might not.  Cost of vaccine is covered for us by selling just one lamb.

[Hellybee]

We had one this year a twin that was unviable and a little unfinished shall we say, the other sibling was perfect.  if its an anomaly, I would be less worried, some just aren't meant to be for a range of reasons.  Ours had a jaw that was flexible and no umbilical cord, navel, just a small hole, some just don't finish developing.  The ewe is quite small, she will leave the flock this year. 


Perhaps the ewe tupped twice and the second one was disturbed and too early to be viable. 

[sarahdean_66]

Thanks guys, just vaccinated with heptivac nothing else, there jaws were twisted n missing bits and some parts had bone missing or soft it was very strange! 

[Hellybee]

Mmmm could be,  we had no twisting of jaw with this one, nowt like that, lamb was just not finished x

from what i ve deduced from my surfing and asking lots of questions to patient local farmers, the earlier the tupping is the more likely the problem, the environment, if theyre up high on windy fields with no marsh etc theres less likely to be midges as they cant fly in anything over a good breeze x