General sheep thread

wrangler

Lambing went well here, all adoptions worked bar one and only lost two lambs since scanning out of around 100 lambs,

Lambing three weeks, still two ewes to lamb.

One ewe put out her guts with a month to go and died and two put out the lambbed after lambing but they're alright now, they still have harnesses on.

We never used to cull because of putting out the whole lambbed after lambing but one of the ewes put it out last year as well ,

We hang them upside down with the loader and the lambbed goes back in easy enough, then put on a spoon and a harness. we take out the spoon after 48hrs. the harness is great to stop them forcing.

We had a lamb with crooked legs and used the white waste water piping split in half along with cotton wool and silage tape to splint him and he's fine now

Sami23

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121947077#Comment_121947077

Fair play that's great going to only lose 2 lambs out of 100.

Jimbo789

That’s a brilliant mortality rate.

I’d say most people scanning 180% or more would be averaging nearly 10% lambing indoors.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121948151#Comment_121948151

It was the most straight forward lambing we ever had, but even with the 500+ ewes we wouldn't lose 10%.

I believe that vaccinating for enzo, toxo really improves the health of the lambing.

A really good farmer around here has retired and successor has cut the sheep from 600 to 175, he's fairly easy going and now has an ecoli outbreak.

The retired farmer would've never had ecoli in the lambs

Jonnyc135

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121948311#Comment_121948311

Hi Wrangler, have a 2 week old lamb with what looks and feels like a dislocated shoulder, is there any thing that can be done for him, thriving well and running around on 3 legs.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121949265#Comment_121949265

It's amazing what a lamb gets over but a dislocated shoulder might be asking a bit much, I'd show him to a vet

Jonnyc135

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121949322#Comment_121949322

Thanks for that, yeah I think I’ll bring him into the vet and get him look at him

Jimbo789

I have around 80% lambed after 13 days, there was a normal amount of minor issues.
One thing I did notice more than other years was a higher of incidences of the first lamb coming backwards especially with triplets.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121950926#Comment_121950926

While there was a lot of rain, the weather wasn't cold. when we got lambs out none had to come back in,.

Don't forget to put out hi-mag buckets if you're not feeding meals after lambing, ewes need to be well used to them before the high risk time

farawaygrass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121948311#Comment_121948311

I’d agree 100% about the toxo and enzo vaccinations. I done the ewes for it for the last few years but the ewe hoggets didn’t get it this year as it was going to take longer to come in to the vets than originally though. Although no outbreak of either thank god, some of lambs from the ewe hoggets are smaller and weaker. Never had that issue since using the vaccine.
Do you have help at lambing time wrangler? That’s a super mortality rate.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121951227#Comment_121951227

We've only 70 here at the moment and we're well set up, there's three sets of cameras on them left over from the time when we had big amount of ewes, we find grennans super ewe and lamb very good, We bought a colostrum refractometer years ago and there's no doubt that colostrum quality improved since we started using grennans.

Using straw instead of silage means that their fodder is similar every year, we can use the same feeding regime every year for the same result, The farmer that has my tunnel rented made better silage this year and got a lot of hardship with big single lambs because he fed the same level of feed as other years, on saying that he had a good year this year and bar a few big singles that were late and fed longer but he didn't have big losses. He seemed to have good crop they scanned nearly two anyway

There's just myself and my OH and that was all that used to lamb the 500-600 years ago I'd look after them until 10 pm OH would look after them until 3am and I d get up at 5am

we've never had a ewe lie on a lamb in the individual pens, we always give pain relief after a hard lambing, when we started that we used to give two panadol down the neck and it seemed to work, but we give an injection now for pain, welll worth doing

Sami23

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121951227#Comment_121951227

What is the name of the vaccinations do ye use for Enzo and Toxo as considering doing it next year ?

Thanks

weatherbyfoxer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121951386#Comment_121951386

Fair play..glad to hear someone is winning with ewes,August can't come quick enough here to sell the whole flock

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121954021#Comment_121954021

Sure I'm sick of them too, gross profit has halved in the last ten or twelve years and so has the biss. There's just some hills you can't climb

farawaygrass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121951386#Comment_121951386

that was some going. Hard work no doubt

farawaygrass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121953687#Comment_121953687

toxovax and enzovax.
im fairly confident it was only toxo we had but the vet recommended doing for both. An outbreak wouldn’t be long wiping out any money not spend

DJ98

Having alot of issues this year with small lambs being born and weak/slow to suck and lambs being born dead and a couple of ewes with rotten lambs inside them. Another issue is with lambs suddenly falling over and unable to get back up. Went through what's left to lamb today and alot of that were scanned in lamb are showing no sign of making a bag yet which makes me think these have also lost there lambs. Would these issues all be down to a problem related to toxo or Enzo or is it something else? Gone to the point where I'm contemplating getting out of ewes and can fully understand james foxs thinking on YouTube that life could be much easier with no ewes about the place.

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121957033#Comment_121957033

toxo and enzo cause a lot more issues than just abortion, once the ewe gets infected but goes full term the blood flow is reduced to the placenta leading to weak lambs. You should be sending off the casualties with the afterbirth to the lab for PM to try to identify whats going on, Listeria in the silage will cause the same symptoms as you describe as well as toxo etc.

I hate weak lambs too

weatherbyfoxer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121957560#Comment_121957560

There is other abortion diseases showing now as well as toxo and enzo

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121957595#Comment_121957595

Campylobacter is common in england but doesn't seem to be here. It's very difficult to get the vaccine here for it.

We had a few isolated cases of it here years ago, but not since

weatherbyfoxer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121957639#Comment_121957639

Brucella,Salmonella,border disease,cache Valley and not to mention smallinberg which seems to be showing its ugly head again this year,We had too many empty ewes and abortions this year from a fully enzo and toxo vaccinated flock

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121957683#Comment_121957683

Do you buy in stock much. we haven't bought anything only rams here for the last twenty years. I've never come across any of those diseases you referred to, the experts reckon that campylobacter is the third most common abortion yet only accounts for 5% of abortions here. You should do blood tests on the ewes that didn't lamb. they're probably immune now from aborting again but it'd be good to know what it was. I'd suspect listeria.

I had a neighbour that had similar symptoms in ewe lambs lambs and asked me to look at them. I looked at their mouths and their gums were in an awful mess, I looked at the silage and it was very stemmy so the silage had cut the gums and the stemmy silage wouldnt let them heal and I reckon had let the listeria in that way. Lambs were full term but a lot of them only averaged 1.5 to 2kgs. If you're going for some surgeries now the surgeon will make you look after your teeth first, I've a friend that couldn't get a hip replacement until he spent 15000 on his teeth. Did you do any post mortems on the foetuses

weatherbyfoxer

We would buy in replacements most years so whatever they had came in that way even doe they were vaccinated. Didn't get any bloods or send off any feotis for testing to the labs either

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121958224#Comment_121958224

Pity, I'd always be curious to know what was going on, Our motto here is never waste a dead sheep, our Lab and knackery are close by and the Lab doesn't charge much more than the knackery.

Hope your problems get sorted

Dinzee Conlee

@wrangler

I have one of those advantage feeders same as yourself, so interested to know how you start the lambs off. Do you open it up to the last to get the lambs interested and then reduce the settings to reduce the feed? What age would the lambs be when you put it out?

My lambs did poorly last year so debating creeping them this year, on whole barley if I could get them going on it. (Would start them on lamb nuts and when they get a bit older and able to lick the feed out would move over to the barley) Gave whole barley through the feeder to the in lamb ewes in Nov/Dec and was pleased with how they did, and how well the feeder worked…

Thanks in advance…

DJ98

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121957560#Comment_121957560

Where do you send lambs for a pm and do you organise it yourself or through the vets?

weatherbyfoxer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121958309#Comment_121958309

If I was lambing them again next spring I definitely would have but moral was that low here at lambing it was just a case of head down and get to the end of lambing as best we could.1 ewe carrying twins left here now and that will be it thankfully

farawaygrass

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121958418#Comment_121958418

lambing would test you no doubt. 4 ewe died here this morning. Lambed 36 hours ago and was forcing yesterday. Gave her an injection and put the harness on her and thought she improved but alas. Other 3 died for all different reasons.
the lab is an hour each way here so it’s hard go at times during lambing.
otherwise lambing is going well and weather has eased so great to get as many out as possible.
went to the shop earlier and saw a blast of lads meeting heading of from a cycle. It’d make you think are we crazy butting such work on ourselves, especially when I assume we all have off farm employment too

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121958396#Comment_121958396

I go to Athlone, it's only half hour from here. A vet has to book it in for PM, the vet pays the lab around €20 and the farmer pays the lab €5 for disposal so about €25 altogether, It was €23 altogether last year, I haven't paid the vets bill yet this year, so don't know what the charges are this year

wrangler

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121958375#Comment_121958375

Yea, we open it fully and then cut it back when they're eating too much.

The advantage feeder was made for whole grain so if you're putting pellets through they have to be dust free, the dust attracts the moisture and slows up the flow, the only Grennans ration that works with us is their Elite lamb.

I see in england that some firms are making a balancer for mixing with the grain in the feeder, it sounds like that would be the ideal.

We used the feeder when the lambs were 4 -6 weeks old last year and it worked fine, we ran out of grass last year during the drought. Also the feeder doesn't let the ewes in