[Jamie12]

Well perhaps not totally unwell yet,

Three left to lamb, one still with a blue raddle mark so she in theory should be lambed by now.

A few nights ago whilst eating she took herself away from the other sheep and started to toss her head, and had a lot of saliva, mum thought she looked as if she was "trying to be sick" although there was no coughing. Treated as twin lamb on advice of local sheep farmer, all appeared well until last night and this morning when she begun to do it again. She is still eating both hay and nuts, drinking plenty and her behavior is still normal, nothing totally obvious but I just have a feeling she isn't herself. Could it be a deficiency of some kind? Hoping I'm having a paranoid moment but I have a gut feeling. No foul smelling discharge either.

[Marches Farmer]

Is she on good grazing?  The grass has been very wet in the mornings here. If yours is the same it could perhaps be a bit of bloat. 

[shep53]

 Some times when a sheep is feeding nuts or similar  a piece gets stuck  and   a lot of head shaking , bouncing and tons of saliva are needed to dislodge , tend to be greedy and eat  to fast

[ewesaidit]

I have a ewe that this happened to a couple of times and it was down to her choking at feed time.  In her case rather alarming - drooling, shaking head - scary stuff as when they're in that state there's not much you can do about it, but luckily she cleared it    Sometimes the mix I was using was a bit 'powdery' - like the annoying fine stuff you get when your cornflakes are getting down to the bottom of the packet!   Mixing some soaked sugar beet through coarse mix dampens it and I've found slows them down a bit (only a bit!) as they can't hoover it in quite the same way. 

[ewesaidit]

... can't hoover it in in quite the same way     that's what I meant to say lol

[fiestyredhead331]

how is she?...

we lost a ewe 2 days after lambing this week from what may have been hypocalcaemia? It was very sudden, but she had been frothing from the mouth after eating some feed, became very lethergic then fluid came from her nose. The vet recommended a course of pen and strep as we rely on late night phone calls to vet as they are so far away but what she really needed was a dose of calciject, which we had in the fridge all the time so very frustating to lose her. Got the vet coming on Tuesday (monthly trip round here) to check over the rest of the flock but as she was getting flaked maize, sugar beet and mineral lick she shouldnt have been calcium deficient 

[fsmnutter]

how is she?...

we lost a ewe 2 days after lambing this week from what may have been hypocalcaemia? It was very sudden, but she had been frothing from the mouth after eating some feed, became very lethergic then fluid came from her nose. The vet recommended a course of pen and strep as we rely on late night phone calls to vet as they are so far away but what she really needed was a dose of calciject, which we had in the fridge all the time so very frustating to lose her. Got the vet coming on Tuesday (monthly trip round here) to check over the rest of the flock but as she was getting flaked maize, sugar beet and mineral lick she shouldnt have been calcium deficient 

Sounds like could have been a magnesium deficiency? It's much more common in cattle but can happen in sheep if the grass has grown too fast for the minerals to be brought in from the soil.
Don't beat yourself up over it, you did the best you could with the advice given. In cattle the first sign of a problem can be a dead cow. I've seen I think about 6 cows this year, 4 sudden deaths (which means I have to check for anthrax), 1 I treated but died anyway as we were too late for her, the last out of the six, the farmer was well aware he caught exactly at the right moment and we treated successfully because the farmer had already given magnesium under the skin before I got there to put more in the vein along with a sedative for the seizures.

[Marches Farmer]

Sounds like could have been a magnesium deficiency? It's much more common in cattle but can happen in sheep if the grass has grown too fast for the minerals to be brought in from the soil.

We shut up the turnout field at the end of August.  That way the ewes are turned out onto grass that's been growing slowly through the Winter, although I've been very tempted to let them in to graze in a hard Winter.

[fiestyredhead331]

thanks for that fsmnutter, spoke to dad and he's lost a couple of ewes this lambing too but the grass is very slow in growing here this Spring