Agri Vehicles Insurance from Greenlands

Author Topic: Pink eye desperation - help please!  (Read 24870 times)

Me

  • Joined Feb 2014
  • Wild West
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #15 on: November 21, 2015, 09:18:56 pm »
Yep

ladyK

  • Joined Dec 2012
  • Conwy Valley
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #16 on: November 22, 2015, 06:00:08 pm »
I agree that less stress of single applicaion is always better but I think I'd have trouble bringing myself to spray something solvent-based into an already badly ulcerated eye, but I'll ask the vet tomorrow.

Will also ask about getting Orbenin from them as everybody here seems to agree that it works well while Opticlox doesn't. Wondering if they use a different carrier so the Orbenin stays on the eye better, hence it works better despite the same active ingredient.  :thinking:

"If one way is better than another, it is the way of nature." (Aristotle)

Me

  • Joined Feb 2014
  • Wild West
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #17 on: November 22, 2015, 07:32:19 pm »
No - not everyone! Hope it works for you though.

Helen Wiltshire Horn

  • Joined Apr 2014
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #18 on: November 22, 2015, 07:48:40 pm »
Sorry to hear about your pink-eye woes.  My flock had it on and off over almost a year a couple of years ago.  We used Alamycin LA and Orbenin and treated as soon as we noticed any signs.  It was a very depressing few months of treating and re-treating.  We also culled a ewe who seemed to have it more than most.  Thankfully, we didn't have any issues last year and didn't have a single case (I hope that I haven't jinxed myself!)  It happened after a particuarly mild winter and I wonder if it was spread by flies.  Anway, just to say that I feel your pain and hope that you get rid of it soon. 
Helen

Me

  • Joined Feb 2014
  • Wild West
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #19 on: November 22, 2015, 08:22:55 pm »
So Orbenin used and had PE. almost a year

Helen Wiltshire Horn

  • Joined Apr 2014
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #20 on: November 22, 2015, 10:14:27 pm »
What I would say about the treatment that we used it that the Alamycin LA/Orbenin combination did work but didn't seem to prevent a recurrence as they got it again, albeit weeks or months later.  It just seemed to continually go around the flock with different animals being affected at different times (often when we were on holiday!). 
Helen

langfauld easycare

  • Joined Apr 2012
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #21 on: November 22, 2015, 10:31:17 pm »
 :wave: i got hit hard with it a few years back was jagging with alamycin la an putting orbenin in eyes . i also tryed drenchin with large doses of cod liver oil . i had been told that this worked but imo it didnt . after raking about i was told to inject with the alamycin then put about a ml of the same stuff direct in to the eye . this seemed to work best out of everything i tryed . but imo i think as many got better on there own as did with treatment.

ladyK

  • Joined Dec 2012
  • Conwy Valley
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #22 on: November 22, 2015, 10:37:10 pm »
I suppose every breed and flock would be affected to a different degree. It's the number of bad cases I have in my small flock of 15 and the degree of recurring cases that worries me, and makes me think what the vet prescribed (Alamycin shots and Opticlox) is not working. Even worse, it seems that every case of recurrence comes down with worse symptoms (gunky eyes turn cloudy, or cloudy eyes turn ulcerated, then blind).

If terramycin directly in the eye is so very effective, surely there must be a more eye-friendly preparations than blue spray to administer that? A quick google search came up with a number of terramycin eye ointments for dogs/cats - anybody has tried that in sheep?
"If one way is better than another, it is the way of nature." (Aristotle)

Me

  • Joined Feb 2014
  • Wild West
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #23 on: November 22, 2015, 10:56:31 pm »
You will do as you see fit, let us know what you chose and how it worked out.

Fleecewife

  • Joined May 2010
  • South Lanarkshire
    • ScotHebs
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #24 on: November 23, 2015, 12:14:06 am »
I wonder if the recurrences people have experienced are because, where treatment has started immediately there is no time for resistance to Pink Eye to develop in each animal?  Effectively then it would be as if each exposure was the first.
Just a thought.

We found that most sheep needed no treatment and the Pink Eye cleared up within a few days on its own. If it persisted then we used Orbenin until the eyes began to improve, then stopped it again.   We used the LA IM AntiB (which if I remember correctly was Terramycin) only on animals whose eyes continued to be bad, which was never many.

The Australian sites quote flies and windblown dust as the main causes of Pink Eye, but here blown hay fragments can be guilty, and untreated flies in places where they are present - we don't get head/eye flies here as it's very open and windy, lucky us.
"Let's not talk about what we can do, but do what we can"

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ladyK

  • Joined Dec 2012
  • Conwy Valley
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #25 on: November 23, 2015, 10:37:47 am »
I wonder if the recurrences people have experienced are because, where treatment has started immediately there is no time for resistance to Pink Eye to develop in each animal?  Effectively then it would be as if each exposure was the first.
Just a thought.

I've been wondering exactly the same.
"If one way is better than another, it is the way of nature." (Aristotle)

kanisha

  • Joined Dec 2007
    • Spered Breizh Ouessants
    • Facebook
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #26 on: November 23, 2015, 12:38:31 pm »
Maybe it is better sometimes to hold off on the AB's until their own immune system has had a chance to fight it off. Wish I had some suggestions to try must be very frustrating.
Ravelry Group: - Ouessants & Company

Helen Wiltshire Horn

  • Joined Apr 2014
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #27 on: November 23, 2015, 02:25:05 pm »
I had thought about holding off on the antibiotic treatment but the speed with which it affected the animals and at which it spread through my flock made me reconsider. Finding a more or less blind ewe stumbling around the field looking very down and obviously in discomfort made me treat as soon as I was sure that the animal did have it. I do think that head flies are the main culprit and we had our year of pink-eye hell after a winter where we had only 1 or 2 hard frosts. 
Helen

Talana

  • Joined Mar 2014
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #28 on: November 23, 2015, 08:22:31 pm »
We had a bout of pink eye  last year in our housed calves last year. Our vet said it was a problem in the area and suspected the silage fumes! He recommended taking the plastic off the silage bale an leaving it for a couple of days to let the fumes away as feeding straight away causing the pink eye. Never had problem like that before, but he said it was just the weather or something that year affecting the silage as other farmers in the area experiencing the same.
Also we used to buy some sheep a the mart off the boat from Shetland, when they were home they seemed prone to pink eye my granny blamed the salt air around them on their journey, or perhalps shetland sheep are more susceptible. The vet 's treatment worked for us.

Red

  • Joined Mar 2011
  • North Yorkshire
Re: Pink eye desperation - help please!
« Reply #29 on: November 23, 2015, 11:04:50 pm »
We had it and a round of anti b and cream on the lid worked but I also rubbed horse fly repellent cream around the head to keep any bugs away and I think it helped. The eye went blind but  he made a full recovery and his eye seems to work perfectly again
Red

 

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