[Nelson International]

Hiya, I noticed this morning that one of my Welsh mountain ram lambs had an odd looking patch on his back. When I investigated a couple of handfuls of wool came away in my hands. I can't find anything obviously wrong with the underlying skin, and there might be a bit of a yellow tint to the base of the wool, but in the field I didn't think to check what "normal" looks like.

Otherwise he's been looking fine - he's not rubbing or gnawing at his fleece at all, and at a push I might say he looks a little thinner than his brother but they've both been growing pretty fine.

He was wormed a week ago, and I was due to give him a cobalt drench this weekend because he had some yellowses earlier on in the summer. Otherwise I can't think of any source of stress or incident of late.

I crovected the site but I understand that treats only a subset of the possible causes. Any advice you might have would be very welcome.

[Nelson International]

Here are some blurry pics I took:

[shep53]

Initial thought is that it looks like strike

[Sbom]

Initial thought is that it looks like strike

My thoughts as well.
Have a good look in and around the area that's wet, bet you find a maggot or two...

[Nelson International]

Thanks, I had a look and couldn't see anything, but I've not encountered strike before, so I'll bring him in again and have a more serious hunt. Reading around, it seems like strike, as nasty as it is, might be preferable as a cause than scab or fleece rot or some of the alternatives.

[Marches Farmer]

Rubbing due to scab or lice or wool slip due to stress of some kind, maybe ....?

[Nelson International]

I had a good look at him this morning and I really couldn't find any evidence of maggots. He's not been rubbing at all that I've seen, and his skin itself seems perfectly normal. And his brother with him has a fleece that seems completely fine.

I also got the ewe lambs in and had a good look at them all as well - one of them has a 50p size patch that seems similar - the wool fell away in my hand, and there was some crusty yellow bits of fleece fairly deep lying but definitely in the wool not in her skin.

Reading around, I'm thinking it might be fleece rot or one type of that sort of thing? It's certainly been raining all summer and for the last week.

[Marches Farmer]

A couple of my lambs slipped a lot of the wool on their backs in the Winter of 2007, when it rained and rained and rained some more.  I sprayed the skin with a/b spray and kept them in the shed for a while as the skin was becoming very soft and I was concerned a staph. infection might set in.

[Nelson International]

Wasn’t sure whether to bump this thread or start a new one, but...

The wool slip that led me to begin this thread in the autumn pretty much stopped, and I was none the wiser as too the cause - it only affected a couple of the sheep, and as I say it stopped. But the ewe affected has had an untidy looking fleece all winter. I noticed this morning that a largish patch on her thigh had pulled away, and on taking a closer look most of the fleece across her back pulled away like an easy care or something, leaving a small layer of fleece like she’s just been shorn. There was a yellowish tint in the wool, but the skin itself looks fine.

I’ve read all the threads on here I could find for wool slip/wool break (& http://www.infovets.com/books/smrm/F/F770.htm and elsewhere) and as best I can tell it’s wool slip caused by some sort of stress. It doesn’t look like any of the mites/lice cases I’ve looked up, and other than looking shocking now and being slighter than her peers, she’s always been alert and hungry and active. One comment in a thread mentioned a case that turned out to be cobalt deficiency - I do know that shepherds in our area tend to Bolus for cobalt (I have been giving mine a periodic drench) and when I got them last year they turned out to have a quite high worm burden, so that’s two potential causes of stress from when the problem first appeared.

Two questions:
- is there anything else I should do to try to investigate the cause?
- what can I do to protect her from the weather? I’m thinking of getting a dog jacket for her for a month or two. Is that crazy?

[Marches Farmer]

We had an old ewe given to us in lamb on condition she lived out the rest of her life here and her fleece got pretty thin the final couple of years so we put her in a calf jacket over the Winter.