I got up this morning to discover Eve, who had been fast asleep at 3am checks, trying to lamb but the lamb had not presented his legs and so was stuck with just his head out. Quick work by me and Kev got her tipped slightly upside down to make a bit more room and I managed to get one of his legs forward and deliver him - and despite his ordeal, he was fine. After half an hour, she gave birth with just a little help to his twin. All are doing fine, and after the first day, Eve, Gizmo and their lambs moved into a bigger shed together. They can all go out as soon as there is some grass for them - maybe it will start to grow this week as the weather is a bit warmer and some rain is forecast for Thursday.
All the other pregnant ewes have had their vaccinations (which helps to give the lambs extra immunity to several diseases via the colostrum, the first milk) and there are now 32 ewes in the main shed. Unfortunately one of the shetlands who was having triplets in about a month shed her lambs so she has had to go on antibiotics and be isolated from the others for a short while and I have my fingers crossed that it was just an isolated incident due to improper development rahter than the start of an abortion storm. Our flock is vaccinated against toxoplasmosis - one cause of abortion passed via hay, straw etc contaminated by young kittens/cats. However, we have not yet vaccinated against enzootic abortion, but also who knows what bacteria etc the sheep were exposed to during the floods which is when they were in the early stages of pregnancy.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment