Weaning Time
Successful weaning of your lamb crop requires planning that starts several weeks ahead of the expected wean date. We recommend lambs be weaned at 60-70 days of age. The lambs should be well adjusted to eating creep and drinking water by this age. The creep ration should be a 16% protein ration at this age.
The producer should not feed the ewe flock any corn the last week prior to weaning and the ewes should be on coarse grass hay. The reduction of energy will signal the ewe to reduce her milk production, and result in less mastitis and ruined udders. I know many people restrict water at the time of weaning, but I do not. If you have done a good job in reducing the quality of forage intake the ewes will dry off correctly. You should walk the weaned ewe pen multiple times a day for the first week watching for signs of mastitis. If you see a ewe with a full, reddened, swollen painful udder, that maybe reluctant to move freely, you should treat her immediately and aggressively. Nuflor and Flunixin work very good in most cases. The higher the milk production, the higher the chance for mastitis. Poor milking ewes rarely have mastitis following weaning.
Lambs wean best if they stay in familiar surroundings. It is advisable to move the ewes to a distant area and leave the lambs in a pen that they know the location of feed and water that is advisable. Make sure there is a source or multiple sources of clean, fresh water available. Adding a source of water soluble Vitamin E and electrolytes to the water sources is recommended. The Vitamin E will help boost immune function and reduce cases of White Muscle Disease. The electrolytes balance the lambs body needs and requirements. Lambs like long stem hay at weaning time and many prefer the hay over a grain source. You should limit the amount hay after one week, and work at getting the lambs onto a higher grain diet. Keeping a source of high quality hay at low levels in their diet helps prevent Polio, Acidosis, Water Belly, and digestive upset. Bi carb offered free choice as well is a good idea. Lambs should be gaining a pound a day during this phase, and some lambs will gain over a pound and a half per day. We think most lambs should be marketed by five months of age, the best doing lambs will be ready by four months of age.
Keep weaned lambs in an area that has plenty of fresh air avoiding stale high ammonia barns. The high ammonia levels lead to barn cough and rectal prolapsing.
Western lambs that have been on grass often are much older when weaned. These lambs should be started with a grass base diet and slowly worked to a concentrate diet over a three week period. The western lambs definitely should also be started with Vitamin E and electrolytes in their water. If you have questions about handling the ewes or lambs at weaning please give us a call. (507-825-4211)
Straight Talk
Our friends in Europe are at it again. The Dutch have recalled 50 tons of beef because it may contain horse meat. These folks have been unknowingly eating horsemeat for the last several years. They are the same people that banned individual maternity pens for sows and disallowed chickens to be caged causing egg prices to go through the roof. At last re-port they were killing 40,000 illegal pigs per hour in their slaughtering plants. Production wasn’t complied with regulation other than in the UK where the pig business has been virtually destroyed. Why is this important? The American Farmer needs to take his stand now, not tomorrow, not next month, not next year, but now. No one cares more about livestock than the person that provides their daily care. As a group, sheep and goat people are the best in the business of animal care.
When you are in need of health information I would encourage you to go to my blog site. We have had 25,000 views made on the site since early January. This site is http://askavetsheep.wordpress.com/. We edit posts and add new ones as issues evolve. We continue to receive more goat questions. This industry appears to be growing. Please check out my orphan lamb post. Almost every third question I receive revolves around bottle lambs and kids, how to feed them, and what’s going wrong.
I received a call from a producer who was having good lambs that were still on the ewe tip over and die. After questioning, we discovered that he had recently added lick tubs to the lot and the lambs really liked them.
I suggested removing the lick tubs among other possibilities. He did, and today he called back and said as soon as he removed the tubs the lambs quit dying.
Classic urea toxicity. There are two practices I thoroughly dislike in the sheep business, one is minerals containing phosphorus and the other is lick tubs.
Corn and soybean oil meal are always cheaper than molasses and urea is obviously safer. Lick tubs and tanks provide profit for the seller, they give a false sense of security and are an easy way out for the producer. They are not the right choice.
Here we go again, another disease, Caseous Lymphadenitis (CL), that appears to be more of a concern than is warranted along with MISDIAGNOSIS as well. Sheep and goats get abscesses. A majority of them occur around the head and always in a lymph node. An abscess in a sheep or goat is not necessarily CL and in our experience usually isn’t. So don’t push the panic button right away and probably never. The CL abscess often has the classically described laminated “onion ring” appearance in cross-section. In goats the abscess tends to be less organized and can be soft and pasty. Most of the abscesses we open do not fit the CL description. They are soft and full of pus. More likely Arcanobacter Pyogenes or several other bacteria that may have made entry.
All of these bacteria including the CL bacteria, Corynebacterium Psuedotuberculosis may enter thru mu-cous membranes and skin breaks during shearing and from contaminated blades. Also, exposure to feed troughs and equipment where there are breaks in the skin. I consider them all infectious versus contagious and obviously there are steps that can be taken to reduce incidence. Feeding correct levels of Iodine in my opinion also reduces incidence.
So if I am a producer and have a sheep or goat with a lump, what do I do? Pretty simple, open it, give 10cc of penicillin and do the best you can to isolate it until the skin heals over. That generally means isolating at least two because you shouldn’t pen a sheep up alone. If you encounter the typical CL lesion you need to tighten up your cull practices and cull any that are not doing properly. CL does often locate internally in sheep more so than in goats and may be the reason for poor doers in your flock. Animals with internal abscesses are always terminal and it is just a matter of time. The older the animal the higher the incidence.
There is a vaccine available and we don’t recommend its use, it is particularly hard on goats.
Women that are pregnant or contemplating pregnancy should stay out of the lambing barn. Many of the diseases that cause abortion in sheep can also cause problems in humans. Toxoplasmosis is the first one that comes to mind but the Campylobacter, Chlamydia, Salmonella and others are a concern as well.
Now I don't want to be an alarmist, walking through the lamb barn is not a problem but assisting lambing, handling newborns and placentas can be. When handling clothes for washing that have had contact with these materials protective gloves should be worn. These organisms are infectious but not contagious. Better to take precautions, play it safe, much better than being sorry later.
Bloat
Bloat is simply an over distention of the rumen by gas. It can occur as either free gas bloat or as frothy bloat. Frothy bloat generally occurs when sheep are grazed on lush legume pasture such as alfalfa or clover. These plants produce a substance that will cause foaming in the rumen and the animal is unable to eructate or relieve this gas. Bloat is diagnosed when there is severe distention of the abdomen on the left side behind the last rib. To relieve free gas bloat you can either pass a stomach tube into the rumen or stick a 16 gauge by 1 1/2 inch needle into the rumen behind the last rib. To treat frothy bloat you need to administer 50ml of vegetable oil orally or injected into the rumen. This will break up the foam and allow the animal to eructate. Commercial anti-foaming agents such as Therabloat are also effective.
Grass Tetany
Grass Tetany occurs when sheep are grazing lush or heavily fertilized pasture. Fast growing plants have low levels of magnesium and since ruminants store very little magnesium they can be-come deficient, affected sheep will show a stiff gait, abnormal coordination, convulsions when stimulated, and may be found dead. Successful treatment for grass tetany is to administer subcutaneously 50-100ml of a magnesium containing solutions such as calcium boroglucanate (CMPK) Magnesium enemas are also rapidly absorbed and successful. Feeding magnesium in mineral free-choice mineral mixes for 30 days prior to pasture turnout is helpful as is allowing sheep to fill up on dry hay immediately prior to pasture turnout. Limiting grazing for the first few days is also beneficial. Up to 20% of affected animals may die even with therapy. Grass tetany is most prevalent in the southern U.S.
