[DartmoorLiz]

What we do and do not do when lambing is about balancing risk.  To give heptavac before balancing with stress induced twin lamb disease.  To lamb inside or outside.  To iodine navels or not.


I am having many happy endings but I have also lost one ewe to twin lamb disease after heptavacing and right now I probably have 2 newly born and orphaned lambs after iodining their navels which drove their mother off and she now wants nothing to do with her beautiful strong new lambs.


Just hanging my dirty washing on the line again. 

[Foobar]

Every day is a learning day, don't worry, everyone has been there.


As for your mother wandering off - are they lambing outside?  If so, there is less need to iodine the navels.  Get them penned up and tie her up if you need to until she comes around.  Wait longer before doing navels, make sure they have sucked and she has cleaned them all up first.
And put her on your cull list!

[Marches Farmer]

Ah, hormones!  We've just blown three years of dust off one of our adopter hurdles for a Badger Face first-timer that lambed on her own, licked them off, let them suckle, then suddenly decided she didn't like her ram lamb at all.  Never before had this happen in five generations of BF's and she'll be going.

[SallyintNorth]

Thanks for sharing.  It's brave and generous of you

And absolutely, we all make our own judgments, based on research, our own experience and advice from locals, vet and so on - and we all get some losses which we beat ourselves up about.

I had a hogg lamb unexpectedly this year.  I knew there'd been an opportunity, and had been watching closely, but there'd been no sign at all.  Then, one day when I was out for the day, I got a call from home to say that a hogg had lambed.  We talked and I judged that I didn't need to rush back, so completed my activity and went home afterwards.  Wrong choice.  The lamb hadn't fed at all.  .  Dead lamb is probably the best outcome all round - the hogg hadn't been fed for being in lamb, had no bag, and by the time I got to the lamb, the window for passive immunity was past.  I do feel very responsible for its death, though.   

[DartmoorLiz]

Thanks for sharing your difficulties, it puts my troubles into perspective.  Interesting that iodine's not so important outside


The great news is after an hour of grazing she must have decided to be a mum again.  I'd just got out there to catch her and the twins so they could bond in the shed and she was standing with them looking all mothery.   

[kanisha]

so it ends well in the end :-) If only we could know that it would save all the heartache inbetween.. 

[Womble]

Listen you lot, I was quite happy until now, thinking we were getting everything right so far this year.

Now I'm simultaneously worried that our ewes are both too fat and too thin! 

[DartmoorLiz]

getting everything right

Does that mean they have read your sign and are only lambing between 7am and 10pm? [size=78%]  [/size]

[Womble]

Actually, DartmoorLiz, one thing we've got right so far is that they're not due until Easter. That's just as well really, as the weather here is currently awful!

I'll report back on whether they obeyed the sign in due course  .

[Old Shep]

Sorry I disagree about iodine.  Even outside you need to do them asap, before they lie in poo etc, waiting will only give more opportunity for infection.  I've never known a mother reject them when you iodine them?

[pharnorth]

Dunno about rejection post iodine.  I was schooled to iodine about an hour of birth to ensure they had some time to bond first and as little handling as you can in the first few hours so as not to interfere. I've not had any issues like this, but have had some who were attentive at first take little notice of the lambs while they are contracting for the afterbirth, sometimes this is not obvious. 

[DartmoorLiz]

I'm still iodining navels but I'm taking time to sit and stair first. It was not so much the iodine as the disruption of catching them that drove the ewe off.


The twins are now so stuck to mother its difficult to tell them apart.


The weather's foul here too but ewes and lambs appear to be coping.

[Womble]

Does anybody use the wee plastic clips for navels?  (They're basically the same ones you use to seal poly bags.)

We tried them one year, but found the ewes bit them off!  I now keep a couple in the lambing kit in case a lamb starts bleeding from its navel, but apart from that, I just cover my hands, trousers and occasionally the lamb in iodine instead.

[Anke]

Bactakil spray - no need for dipping the umpteeenhh.. lamb in the same iodine solution (with a good collection of bacteria already in it), about an hour after birth. Never had joint ill so far (either in kids or lambs born in and outside). On the goat kids spraying repeated a few hours later.

[DartmoorLiz]

Iodine gets everywhere! It is comforting to know that I must absorb so much at lambing time that there would be no need for iodine pills in the event of a nuclear accident.