Author Topic: sheep bottoms (Read 2935 times)

Danny · « **on:** January 21, 2018, 07:57:41 pm »

Hi guys,

i brought 3 herdwick ewes last October as yearling. all has been fine with them and their all healthy. until one was looking a bit off, so i caught her and was giving her a check over when i notice she has NO anal passage and all her stools pass out of her lady bits. she is fine in herself now and im guessing shes been like this since birth. my local vet had no idea and is looking into it for me but i was wondering if anyone on here has had/heard of this before? thank you

twizzel · « **Reply #1 on:** January 21, 2018, 08:05:10 pm »

Yes... normally if found at birth it can be resolved by the vet in a simple procedure but if left till older there isn’t much they can do. I wouldn’t keep long term, culling is normally the best thing to do if I remember right.

Me · « **Reply #2 on:** January 21, 2018, 08:14:18 pm »

Don't worry too much. I had an emergency call once from a farmer in his 70s worried as a ewe was birthing and it only had "one hole so how will the lamb get out" it got out the same way it got in. I stayed home.

shep53 · « **Reply #3 on:** January 21, 2018, 08:23:23 pm »

Have had a couple of ewe lambs like this over the years, seem to manage ok until they were good enough to kill

Fleecewife · « **Reply #4 on:** January 21, 2018, 08:39:02 pm »

Unless it's a wether..............

bj_cardiff · « **Reply #5 on:** January 21, 2018, 09:40:54 pm »

I had one too, she was always a bit poor and often apart from the others. She was often quite 'dirty' she must of been 6 months old when I was cutting the dirty fleece away she started straining and I realised she had no bum. I called fallen stock and they dispatched and took away the following day. Poor thing must of been in agony

SallyintNorth · « **Reply #6 on:** January 22, 2018, 09:19:28 am »

No anus is not that uncommon. It’s genetic, so don’t breed from her.

They can’t all be fixed, and if there’s no exit and one can’t be made, then it’s a short life. With wethers they can sometimes make a hole where it should be. Some females are born like yours and some have had the hole made that way as the easiest fix. But these are for eating not breeding.

Melmarsh · « **Reply #7 on:** January 23, 2018, 11:53:37 am »

I had a ewe with twin females , one she kept knocking away and I couldn't understand why. Whilst feeding her she had a poo and it came out of her vagina. I had to rear her but she went in the freezer as vet advised not to breed due to an infection risk , otherwise she was no problem.

shep53 · « **Reply #8 on:** January 23, 2018, 12:34:38 pm »

Need to quantify a bit , I have seen 2 ewe lambs like the post and maybe 10 wether lambs with no anus out of maybe 40,000 lambs , so it really shouldn't be that common . The 2 ewe lambs ,1 wether and 2 cryptorchid ram lambs ( no decended testicles ) were all fathered by the same ram in his first time use , so culled at a £700 loss

SallyintNorth · « **Reply #9 on:** January 26, 2018, 08:11:03 pm »

It’s common enough in the north of England that ‘bumhole’ is a standard check when ringing lambs.

I saw maybe one or two most years in the early days on the moorland farm, lambing 500+ ewes each year. We robustly identified and removed from breeding the mothers and the incidence dropped to usually
zero.

On the Cumbrian hill farm I think I recall two out of 8 years’ lambing 200-250 ewes each year. But there may have been others that were not identified - the foxes made short shrift of any lambs that weren’t thriving up there.