General sheep thread

kk.man

DJ98 wrote: »

Ewe scanned for twins, going about lambing since morning however when I pulled the first lamb it came out wrapped in the cleanings, born dead, she's too tight to get the second lamb anyidea what the cause of this would be?

Did u leave her too long to intervene...I usually give them an hour after seeing the water bag.

I'm only summarising... not an expert

wrangler

kk.man wrote: »

Did u leave her too long to intervene...I usually give them an hour after seeing the water bag.

I'm only summarising... not an expert

I'd be the same.....''if in doubt get them out'' I've always heard, Ewes are inclined to dry out inside if left too long I find, Every case is different
On saying that, if all the lambs are dead some ewes don't break down at all.,

wrangler

DJ98 wrote: »

Ewe scanned for twins, going about lambing since morning however when I pulled the first lamb it came out wrapped in the cleanings, born dead, she's too tight to get the second lamb anyidea what the cause of this would be?

Could be anything, hurt, dogs, even mouldy silage, We always bring them to a lab for post mortem.
Seeing that teh other lamb came out you should be able to get the second one out, put plenty of gel into her and use a twine on the head and the feet.
You might get to put a lamb on her if she has milk

DJ98

wrangler wrote: »

Could be anything, hurt, dogs, even mouldy silage, We always bring them to a lab for post mortem.
Seeing that teh other lamb came out you should be able to get the second one out, put plenty of gel into her and use a twine on the head and the feet.
You might get to put a lamb on her if she has milk

Second lamb out, also dead

charolais0153

DJ98 wrote: »

Second lamb out, also dead

You'll have that. Try and foster on a lamb or 2 asap.

Siamsa Sessions

We’ll be keeping 25-30 ewe lambs this year as replacements. If I sprayed numbers on them to match with their mothers as they’re being left out of the shed, would the number be still on them in 2 months time? Or would the spray have washed off and I’d be better off just tagging them as they go out?

DJ98

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

We’ll be keeping 25-30 ewe lambs this year as replacements. If I sprayed numbers on them to match with their mothers as they’re being left out of the shed, would the number be still on them in 2 months time? Or would the spray have washed off and I’d be better off just tagging them as they go out?

Use an ear notcher here to mark potential replacements

Cran

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

We’ll be keeping 25-30 ewe lambs this year as replacements. If I sprayed numbers on them to match with their mothers as they’re being left out of the shed, would the number be still on them in 2 months time? Or would the spray have washed off and I’d be better off just tagging them as they go out?

Throw a tag in them, markers never stay especially as wool grows

Siamsa Sessions

Cran wrote: »

Throw a tag in them, markers never stay especially as wool grows

Thanks. It’ll be one less job to do down the line too.

Is it worth disinfecting the tag points when the lambs are so young?

wrangler

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

Thanks. It’ll be one less job to do down the line too.

Is it worth disinfecting the tag points when the lambs are so young?

We don't use anything on the tags at two days old....... we scabivax as we tag, handiest time to do it we find.
Lambing going grand here, very thankful to have only 80 ewes in a tunnel that was originally built for over two hundred.
We're like the dairyfarmers, the ewes and lambs are out during the day.

Dinzee Conlee

Siamsa Sessions wrote: »

Thanks. It’ll be one less job to do down the line too.

Is it worth disinfecting the tag points when the lambs are so young?

After getting a bad doing from hoggets ears getting infected a few years ago, I always disinfect the tags now.
I use the cover of a marker spray bottle with surgical spirits in it, just dip them in before they into the tagger...

arctictree

Lost 2 lambs of a triplet set this morning. Ewe had prolapsed a couple of weeks ago. The first dead lamb was breach and stuck in the prolapse strap. The second was dead but luckily I got the last one out alive. Normally they can lamb past the straps but not in this case.

joe35

what to people do with used half ton meal and fert bags. clearing out a shed for pens and its full of emptys. Also what do you use to notch the ewes ear. TIA

ganmo

joe35 wrote: »

what to people do with used half ton meal and fert bags. clearing out a shed for pens and its full of emptys. Also what do you use to notch the ewes ear. TIA

I fold them up and bring them to a farm plastic recycling collection point when I'm going with the silage wrap

razor8

Used the meal ones for wool bags or drop them off with wool merchants

Sheep breeder

Dinzee Conlee wrote: »

After getting a bad doing from hoggets ears getting infected a few years ago, I always disinfect the tags now.
I use the cover of a marker spray bottle with surgical spirits in it, just dip them in before they into the tagger...

Good plan and we use a baby wipe to clean the ear first and find a super job.

Lambman

Lads numbering lambs today hoping for the weather till get them out shortly noticed 1 lamb with a massive bulge on it's side from front shoulder till half way back his ribs... Give him an antibiotic but question is should I bust it Lance it or just leave it? Doesn't seem till be affecting lamb looks lively enough... He does tend till lay down under the feeding trough so there's a chance he got jammed getting out again.. another explaination could be there's a pallet tied on blocking part off the feeding barrier till make a creep area for lambs maybe he got a splinter off that.

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

Lads numbering lambs today hoping for the weather till get them out shortly noticed 1 lamb with a massive bulge on it's side from front shoulder till half way back his ribs... Give him an antibiotic but question is should I bust it Lance it or just leave it? Doesn't seem till be affecting lamb looks lively enough... He does tend till lay down under the feeding trough so there's a chance he got jammed getting out again.. another explaination could be there's a pallet tied on blocking part off the feeding barrier till make a creep area for lambs maybe he got a splinter off that.

I've one like it here at the moment, I'm hoping it's just a bruise and will be reabsorbed, it happened on monday and it's reducing so have probably red it right....... but your lamb might be totally different.
There's five ewes and ten lambs in the pens here so another ewe might have got defensive and pinned him to the wall

roosky

if thinking of lancing something i get a brand new clean needle and i put it in the "bulge" and draw up a bit of what ever is inside if its blood or stale blood i leave it alone but if its puss i lance it and blue spray and a LA antibiotic injection

Lambman

This is just like a water balloon very fluidy if I knew how till put pictures on this I would... Yeah he's in with 4 ewes and 7 lambs... I only noticed this morning but coulda been there last night might leave him till this evening give the antibiotic a chance till work and hopefully see some improvement by then... Neighbour called over since and he says he'd syringe it out because it's infected and would be better out off the body?

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

This is just like a water balloon very fluidy if I knew how till put pictures on this I would... Yeah he's in with 4 ewes and 7 lambs... I only noticed this morning but coulda been there last night might leave him till this evening give the antibiotic a chance till work and hopefully see some improvement by then... Neighbour called over since and he says he'd syringe it out because it's infected and would be better out off the body?

Can't do any harm to see what's in it, mines just a circle two inches wide and rose maybe half an inch so doesn't look that bad

Lambman

Stuck a needle in there with the intention off sucking it out with a syringe but as soon as I put needle in it started running out it so drained it all out hes back looking normal now... Have a ewe there though that lambed trips a week ago tomorrow pulled lamb off her yesterday and today she wouldn't eat nuts picked a bit at silage but is standing with her head tight in the corner... 1 did off her elder is very hard so I milked it out a bit milk looks fine.

ganmo

Lambman wrote: »

Stuck a needle in there with the intention off sucking it out with a syringe but as soon as I put needle in it started running out it so drained it all out hes back looking normal now... Have a ewe there though that lambed trips a week ago tomorrow pulled lamb off her yesterday and today she wouldn't eat nuts picked a bit at silage but is standing with her head tight in the corner... 1 did off her elder is very hard so I milked it out a bit milk looks fine.

What colour was it?

Lambman

The stuff that drained outta lamb or the milk in the ewe? Stuff that came outta lamb looked like piss. Milk in ewe looked 100%

MeTheMan

Wishing for a bit of decent weather here. Into single figures to lamb but still have about 50 indoors. The ones that are out are coping fairly well. You'd forget how tough they can be. Just don't want to let a burst out, fill the space where they were and possible have to bring them back in again.
Even though the shed resembled A and E on a bank holiday weekend for the last two weeks it went fairly well. Less then 4% losses. One ewe lacking milk came to it the next day. No lamb relying on use for feed but a few triplets will be trained on the auto feeder before they leave the shed and no vet calls. So far so good.
Used ram effect on them for the first time this year. Worked well. Don't have exact number yet but around 75-80% lambed in the first 12 days. Usually we'd only have 10 lambed in the first week. Eight left to lamb.
Only for this flecking weather we'd have a nice quiet shed with about 15 in it.

wrangler

Lambman wrote: »

The stuff that drained outta lamb or the milk in the ewe? Stuff that came outta lamb looked like piss. Milk in ewe looked 100%

Hope fully it's not piss, hopefully his plumbing is correct

DJ98

Horny ewes here this year are a disaster lambing, only about 8 after lambing but 3 of these are after having big dead single lambs, they lamb themselves, often when I'm not around, some have nice handy size lambs but others are massive and they were all fed the shame, have managed to Foster lamb's onto the ones that lost a lamb

Birdnuts

DJ98 wrote: »

Horny ewes here this year are a disaster lambing, only about 8 after lambing but 3 of these are after having big dead single lambs, they lamb themselves, often when I'm not around, some have nice handy size lambs but others are massive and they were all fed the shame, have managed to Foster lamb's onto the ones that lost a lamb

What ram did you use?? I've had bad experiences in the past with Suffolks on these Ewes:(

DJ98

Birdnuts wrote: »

What ram did you use?? I've had bad experiences in the past with Suffolks on these Ewes:(

Texels

Birdnuts

DJ98 wrote: »

Texels

Don't know a whole lot about Texels as my place in the West would not be suiteable for them and I don't know any of the more experienced operators locally using them. However I would say I've learn't to avoid any of the bigger(softer??) breeds for lambing with smaller horny ewes as from my experiece it can lead to the type of hardship you mention in your previous post.