Category: Livestock

I’ll start by ending any suspense: the Jacob ewe lamb died last week. This in just a week after I first noticed there was a problem, and she was five weeks old. On a Saturday, I ear-tagged and weighed all the lambs.

All looked fine and healthy; albeit the Jacob lamb was still thin. She was not exhibiting as much weight gain as I’d like to see, or as the Katahdin lambs are demonstrating. She was 5lbs at birth, and was up to 9lbs 3 oz 30 days later. This, compared to #33’s triplet ewes, who all gained about the same amount of weight in just over two weeks.

And, if I compare her to the single ram lamb born in January: he gained fourteen lbs in a month, nearly tripling his birth weight! But, this was not unexpected, since her dam is severely underweight as well.

So, back to the problem: she looked fine that Saturday morning when I handled her. The following Monday night, she had large bald patches all over her hindquarters! Her wool was completely disadhered and peeling off! She was shivering-cold from the rain. I put a synthetic fleece jacket back on her (she wore this the first week of her life as well) and went inside to read. What could cause this?

None of my sheep books mentioned alopecia (hair loss) at all, except in the context of skin parasites. This was such a drastic change, surely it was not due to lice, keds or the like. I could see no sign of parasites, scabs or inflammation; and the rest of the flock is OK. So, I browsed the Internet looking for ideas. When you think of rapid hair loss, of course cancer chemotherapy is the first thing to come to mind, chemical toxicity is the most likely culprit. And, once I started thinking along that vein, I remember noticing her head in the mineral salt box when I was out there on Saturday. I think it is unusual for a young lamb to be interested in salt, if, ideally, she is getting everything she needs from nursing.

I found a few citations on the Web indicating that selenium (SE) toxicity can cause alopecia; though the citations were referring to sheep turned out on grass that was high in SE concentrations. We have low SE in our region, thus it is added to all sheep mineral supplements sold here, and is certainly present in mine. She could have OD’ed on the salt lick, out of a sense of desperation for minerals she was not getting in her milk. Alternatively, her dam may have OD’ed on it when she came to our place, if she did not have access to mineral supplements at Lynn’s; thus passing dangerously high concentrations of it in her milk.

This reference cites hair loss from SE toxicity. This reference cites salivation,  neurological distress, blindness, and convulsions. By Tuesday, she was foaming at the mouth, so OK, that’s symptom #2. Wednesday, she also seemed to show some “head palsy” movement, and an odd gait in the rear, so definitely some implication of neurological problems. And she was tired, she did not want to be up on her feet much.

The first Web citation suggests treating with a sulphate mixture, but this sounded too scary to me, especially since I had no way to confirm my diagnosis. The second citation says, “Treatment may be attempted, however the prognosis is guarded.”

In case you’re wondering: a vet call is usually not warranted for production animals. It sounds harsh, but these sheep are a  meat crop, with their final value being only around $200. And, to some extent, doing heroics to save weak animals is not wise: it certainly does not improve your breeding program, and usually does not result in a good meat animal. I would easily spend thousands of dollars to save my dogs, who are both farm help and treasured pets. But, the sheep must make do with whatever assistance I can offer them in facing Mother Nature’s challenges, without the benefit of hospitalization.

Since she seemed OK, other than the wool loss, I started with a homeopathic remedy for poison: Arsenicum. By Thursday, I was convinced she was on the mend, she was up and about, and though still a little palsy-ish, she seemed to be nursing, keeping up with the group and staying warm in her jacket. I stopped giving the remedy, as I’m always afraid to over-do homeopathy.

But, she must have taken a turn for the worse Saturday night in the cold rain. Sunday morning, she was flat on her side, convulsing, wet and cold. I also noticed a “weirdness” in one of her eyes: it looked like the eye of a deceased animal, cloudy and motionless. Blindness? I brought her in, warmed her in the bathtub, dried and re-jacketed her, and stuck her in a dog crate with blankets and a heating pad. I gave her a few more doses of Arsenicum, then switched to Belladonna (another homeopathic remedy) for the convulsions.

She improved slightly over several hours, the convulsions died down to subtle twitching, and she seemed more relaxed. I’d heard some rattle-ey breathing that morning, so then suspected pneumonia on top of everything else. So, I started her on penicillin, gave her a shot of vitamin B, and an oral dose of vitamin boost. She seemed to rally over the next 24 hours, but then crashed again, and ultimately died, a week after I first saw the wool loss.

So, the “prognosis guarded” warning was right. Though she seemed to fight hard, if this was a mineral overdose, it was probably too much for her kidneys, especially in her malnourished state. I’d be curious to learn if others have seen this manifestation before, or if anyone has an alternate guess as to the cause, since I couldn’t find a lot of written help on this set of bizarre symptoms.

As for me, I’m definitely going to think twice about taking in any poorly conditioned animals in the future! At least since this Jacob ewe was a gift, if I invest a lot of feed in re-conditioning her, she may still be worth it next fall when she’s bred again, if she can produce vigorous twins next year. But I think it’s a classic demonstration of how critical maternal nutrition is to the success of the offspring!

I got my scrapie DNA test results back already- wow, both rams are “RR”! That’s pretty cool news. I think what I’m going to do is keep them both for this fall’s breeding cycle, and split the ewes between them, so that I have a more diverse lineage next spring.

I’m waffling over whom to keep for the longer term. Hershey is getting older, so I may sell him so someone else can get a few year’s use out of him before he’s ready for the slaughter truck. Hershey is a very good ram, big, sturdy, nice hair coat,  tough feet, and calm. The ram lamb is nice in body, but he is wooly,  and short-necked. So I should probably be picky about that in using him too much. Rams have so much influence since they end up siring so many offspring, it’s important to choose very good ones. Versus ewes, one can be more forgiving with some flaws, as long as they are good mothers and are paired with a high quality sire.

I don’t entirely mind the shedding wool, most of the year they are still nice-looking animals. But right now, while they are shedding, they look very moth-eaten, and the wool they shed is messy in the pasture. So, I think I’d like to work to breed away from that for my own personal tastes. Not to mention, it’s the preferred thing to do for the Katahdin breed improvement, as the “true” hair coat is supposed to be the goal. On the other hand, that is mostly an appearance-based evaluation of the animals. My primary focus is their production traits: do the ewes produce robust twins and are the offspring well structured in their meat traits, and fast-growing?

By the way, I can’t remember if I provided this link before. Here is a very nice explanation of the scrapie DNA subject, courtesy of the Erradicate Scrapie website. Simple enough for the layman to understand, but technical enough for the interested breeer to find useful in evaluating how DNA testing might fit into their breeding program.

I decided I wanted to test two of our rams for the scrapie resistance gene. Rams that are “RR” at codon 171 are valuable in that all of their offspring with either be “RR” or “QR,” both of which are considered resistant to scrapie. Hershey is our older ram, I am interested in his status. I did not castrate #900, who was born in January, thinking I may want to keep and breed him. He was sired by Jessica’s ram, #650, so is unrelated to all the sheep I have (except his mother, of course). And, #650 is “RR” and also is a very nice ram, so capturing his genetics may be desirable. So, I’m testing those two rams before deciding on my breeding plans for this fall.

The other two ram lambs born this year I castrated- they were born late enough that they’ll probably still be around when the ewes start going back into heat around August/September. I don’t want any accidental breedings, or the necessity of having to separate them; so they’ll be dedicated as butcher lambs. I figure that if I decide not to keep #900 for breeding, I’ll either sell or butcher him before that time frame, so it was safe to keep him intact. He is a lunker, a chubby boy, his mama is feeding him well!

I shopped around a bit on the web for DNA testing companies. I found three, but sadly, one appears to have gone out of business in the last week, I assume as a result of the tough economy. Of the remaining two, Biogenetic Services, offers customers the option of using blood “cards” instead of collecting blood in a vial/tube. I didn’t want to have to call a vet out, or haul the sheep to a vet just to collect a tiny bit of blood. I figured I could probably figure out how to draw blood on my own, but would still have to get a hold of the “purple top tubes” necessary to send blood in vial form. And then you have to pay for faster shipping, to keep the blood fresh.

By comparison, collecting a few drops of blood to put on a paper card is much easier to collect, and mail. Biogenetic Services sells the cards in batches of 15, for a dollar each, plus a few bucks S&H. I purchased a small box of lancets intended for diabetic use, so that I could be sure that each blood sample was clean. The instructions say you can also use the same piercing instrument and clean it with alcohol between animals, but there is risk of contamination. We are talking about such small quantities of blood here, that if you just get the tiniest bit of somebody else’s blood mixed in, it will invalidate the sample.

I spoke with the veterinarian on staff at Biogenetics, and he warned that even animals housed together in close quarters (like a feedlot) can often have each other’s blood on them. He recommended collecting from the ear, which I did. I found that piercing the tip of the ear produced the best blood drop, which I carefully squeezed from lower on the ear, to keep my hands away from the sample. I tried to make sure that I handled the card from the edges, and that the only thing that touched the target area of the card was the blood drop.

Then all that was left to do was label the cards, and send them off in the mail in a regular envelope! I’m anxious to learn the results!

Our last lambs were born today- two more ewe lambs, yeah! These belong to #801, who was a small yearling who did not look very big-in-the-belly, so she surprised us with twins! It’s a relief to have all the lambing over with, I plan to move all the sheep back down to the pasture on Saturday. The grass is growing, so the timing is good.

Our lamb crop statistics this year, for what they’re worth with a small lot of sheep:

• 200% lamb crop (6 ewes, 12 lambs born)
• 17% mortality (2 lambs died)
• 7 ewes, 3 rams 
• All but one ewe lambed during the day-very nice!

I’m not keen about tail docking on any animal, since it is a true amputation, and I have concerns about what it does to the animal’s physiology and whether they suffer from phantom limb syndrome. In sheep, short tail docking is definitely linked to greater incidence of rectal prolapse.

A couple of my Katahdins came with docked tails, and I don’t like them- it looks less clean to me, as “tail action” helps remove manure from their back ends. The ones that do have tails use them a lot, they are very expressive. I prefer the look of the natural tails, and am happy that I don’t have to dock any of my Katahdin lambs.

But, the single Jacob ewe was a different consideration. Lore has it that if you leave tails on wooled sheep, there is great danger of manure collection at the back end, which attracts fly eggs, then maggots, which will eventually eat flesh. So, when considering that, tail docking doesn’t seem so awful.

So, I docked this girl’s tail, using the banding method. I left the dock fairly long, maybe five joints, so hopefully she doesn’t have prolapse danger. I’m disappointed with the look though, as this thing atrophies and gets ready to fall off, I can see she’s not going to be nearly as cute as her long tail was! But it won’t show once she’s an adult and all wooley (like her filthy mama is in the background!).

Here are photos of the twin lambs born last Thursday night. The first one was a ewe lamb, she’s kind of a dilute colored brown.

The second lamb was a ram, he’s the came-out-backwards guy. He seemed a bit weak that night, but by morning was up and about and nursing fine. He is also dilute brown, and has white socks on  his rear legs.

#33 had triplets today, all ewes- nice! They were on the ground when I got home from work. All look strong and healthy, and are nursing. I’m going to let her try to raise them all, her bag is so big, and she’s in pretty good condition, I think she can do it.

#33 was worrying me a bit in the last day or so, as she looked like she might prolapse. But, she didn’t, thankfully. Her lambs are white, brown and a spotted one, one six and the other two seven pounders.

A few hours later, #107 had twins, a ewe and a ram, both nine pounders. I don’t have photos of those yet, it was after dark. The first one I pulled, holy cow, the ewe seemed to have trouble pushing that one. The lamb’s tongue was sticking out in the fashion of a badly formed or dead animal during the labor process, so I was relieved to see she was normal once out! The second one was a breeched presentation, but he came out easily enough. He seemed to have more trouble breathing and coming around,  I wonder if his bag and umbilical cord broke early, and he was without oxygen for a bit?

On Monday, #802 had one mondo-sized singleton ram lamb,  10.5 pounds, a brown one. He was so fully formed, he was literally galloping about minutes after being born, with the mother desperately trying to keep up with him!

And lastly, here is #33’s waistline, postpartum. I bet she is glad to have those things outta there!