Skin condition

Username John

Folks,

I have a strange one for ye...

During the winter, I found that two lambs had developed some kinda weird skin condition at the ends of their ears. When I brought them in, I found that the ends of their ear had somehow gotten infected, and you could pull the skin off almost... I kept em in for a few days and put iodine on them, and it cleared up... but the skin hardened like concrete...

Now, jumpy forward to after Christmas and I tagged the lambs with EID tags... but in the weeks that followed, I noticed a good few of them had infected ears...
I have seen this before, you'd often get one or two... but this was too many...

And the infection was funny - there was a lot of proud flesh started growing around the hole in the ear. And again, a strange infection... again I put iodine on, and it solved it - but some took a few goes of iodine to solve...

Now, some lambs have ears with hard swollen ends on their ears...

See attached two pics
- one of an ear when the tag came out, and how the ear hasn't recovered properly...
- one showing how think the ear has gotten at the end...

(The pics aren't super, sorry)

Anyone seen anything like it?

AntrimGlens

John before I saw the pics I would have thought cobalt deficiency. I've seen mostly Charolais lambs with scaly ears (are yours suffolks) but nothing like in the pics. Are they stores you bought in or your own?
If they were tagged wrongly and through the ligaments it could have caused the damage but don't know that it would cause them to regrow that shape? Only other thing may be yellowses or photosensitisation?

Username John

AntrimGlens wrote: »

John before I saw the pics I would have thought cobalt deficiency. I've seen mostly Charolais lambs with scaly ears (are yours suffolks) but nothing like in the pics. Are they stores you bought in or your own?
If they were tagged wrongly and through the ligaments it could have caused the damage but don't know that it would cause them to regrow that shape? Only other thing may be yellowses or photosensitisation?

I suspected photosensitisation on the first two - plus they were on stubble, and I thought maybe it was some strange plant that they had eaten that maybe brought it on...
But when I brought them in and treated them, I wasn't so sure...

But with the tagging, it seems to be some kinda thing that once the skin is broken, it causes a nasty infection... I should add as well, that one or two cut themselves in wire or the likes over the winter - and again, once there was a wound, it went nasty very quickly... but again, iodine cleared it up easily enough...

They are in both bought in ewe lambs and some of my own ewe lambs.

Whilst they ok now, some of them have nasty ears hanging off them, as the ear has folded a bit in some, making em not very nice looking... not serious, just not great when I'm planning on selling em...

arctictree

General rant - I hate tagging. Sometimes I make a balls of it and rip the ear.

Surely there must be some better less invasive way to permanently mark sheep with todays technology?