Ewes with milky like glaze on eyes.

Western Pomise

Have a problem which plenty of sheep farmers will be familiar with...often occurs this October or March time of year when there are harsh cold winds.Have 10/15 ewes with milky coloured glaze on eyes which leads to blindness if untreated...got Oxycillin Injection off vet and Opticlox eye drops which need to be put in every 2 days....ewes out with rams now so trying to keep affected ones in one bunch....contagious enough thing...forgot to ask vet...does Oxycillin cause newly tipped ewes to abort??...will have to keep injecting anyhow....no point having blind ewes!....first few are responding well to treatment thank God.

supersean1999

Western Pomise wrote: »

Have a problem which plenty of sheep farmers will be familiar with...often occurs this October or March time of year when there are harsh cold winds.Have 10/15 ewes with milky coloured glaze on eyes which leads to blindness if untreated...got Oxycillin Injection off vet and Opticlox eye drops which need to be put in every 2 days....ewes out with rams now so trying to keep affected ones in one bunch....contagious enough thing...forgot to ask vet...does Oxycillin cause newly tipped ewes to abort??...will have to keep injecting anyhow....no point having blind ewes!....first few are responding well to treatment thank God.

iv had a few outbreaks of this, and never use the injection in the eye, the mastitis tube and engemysin injection into the flank (wrong spelling) , normally does not take long to clear, treat the eye when you see it starting to water over, also i was told to give all sheep a fluikiver dose because,

Richk2012

Western Pomise wrote: »

Have a problem which plenty of sheep farmers will be familiar with...often occurs this October or March time of year when there are harsh cold winds.Have 10/15 ewes with milky coloured glaze on eyes which leads to blindness if untreated...got Oxycillin Injection off vet and Opticlox eye drops which need to be put in every 2 days....ewes out with rams now so trying to keep affected ones in one bunch....contagious enough thing...forgot to ask vet...does Oxycillin cause newly tipped ewes to abort??...will have to keep injecting anyhow....no point having blind ewes!....first few are responding well to treatment thank God.

Why keep injecting ewes with something you think may cause them to abort when there is other methods of treating the problem?????
Unless your farm is different to mine , im sure you will have enough losses at lambing through one thing and another without adding to it yourself .

Unless your feeding meal in troughs or silage in round feeders , there usually isn't an epidemic of the disease as they are not making constant contact around the eye area .

We call it pink eye but the medical name is New Forest Disease . I remember this because the whloe flock got it about five years ago , around a month before lambing started.

The vet advised us to use mastitis tubes called Terraxine LA squirted under the infected eyelid , along with an injection of Tetroxy .
Iv also heard of pencillin squirted under the eyelid with a small syringe being
effective .

Western Pomise

Was only wondering out loud if Oxycillin was ok to give freshly tipped ewes....checked with vet since and it is,pink eye is bloody contagious,another few new cases today in bunches that were fine...pain in behind having to put in bunches of ewes without dog (so as not to annoy them) to segregate the new cases....the opticlox comes in dry cow like tube.

greysides

New Forest Eye is a different disease, a disease of cattle. Both it and this are called 'Pink Eye' though. Penicillin injections, tubes or ointments are not suitable for treating this disease.

Richk2012

I found the tubes effictive ....
Whats recommended ??

greysides

The most likely primary bugs involved (Mycoplasma, rickettsia, Chlamydia) are not sensitive to penicillins as they have no cell wall for the penicillins to act upon. If the tubes are working it's probably against secondary infections (Staph, Moraxella). Some of the tetracycline based eye powders would be better choices. Aureomycin used to used. That's why long acting tetracycline injections are recommended.

Something similar to this.

For sheep and goats, in which chlamydophilal and mycoplasmal infections are most likely, respectively, topical tetracycline, oxytetracycline/polymyxin B, or erythromycin ointments are the treatments of choice. These preparations are all effective against Chlamydophila or Mycoplasma and should be applied 3-4 times daily. If topical therapy is not practical, an injection of long-acting oxytetracycline (10-20 mg/kg, IM) or the addition of oxytetracycline to the feed (80 mg/animal/day) may be beneficial.

http://www.merckvetmanual.com/mvm/index.jsp?cfile=htm/bc/30500.htm




http://www.nadis.org.uk/bulletins/eye-diseases-in-sheep.aspx

haybob

Richk2012 wrote: »

I found the tubes effictive ....

so did I

supersean1999

haybob wrote: »

so did I

so did i , not a problem with tubes

greysides

It may be that the organisms responsible in Ireland are biased differently to elsewhere. The advice quoted is coming from experience in the UK and the US, based on the organisms most commonly found present in clinical cases.

Or it may be that clearing up the secondary infections is sufficient to allow the sheep to clear the primary infection itself.

At the end of the day it's the results that matter but guidelines from research are a logical starting point.

Western Pomise

Still have the odd ewes becoming infected and eyes glazing over....no pun intended but am watchin them like a hawk....bloody annoying,am treating them correctly as per vets instruction with opticlox eye tube and injection.Anyone else ever have pearl eye go on for a few months?.