STARTING WITH SHEEP

An extract from the book by Mary Castell
published by Broad Leys Publishing Ltd

A sample double page spread
taken from Starting with Sheep.

Problems at Lambing

Resuscitation

Some lambs may be born with a beating heart but do not start breathing. This may be because the lamb is premature, has suffered from lack of oxygen during birth, or is just slow and starts to breathe after a minute. Obviously, when a lamb is not breathing, immediate action is required. After checking that the airways are clear, you can tickle the nostrils with a straw, give the lamb an energetic rub-down with a towel, or grasp the lamb above the hocks and give it a good swing round, using the whole length of the arm. If the lamb does not breathe after a couple of swings, give up. Do not use mouth to mouth resuscitation as this only inflates the stomach.

Rejection

Sheep are such devoted mothers that it is disturbing to watch a ewe rejecting her lamb. When a second twin is born a long time after the first, the ewe may refuse to take any notice of it, and it may be necessary to remove the firstborn until she has taken to the second. Sometimes, especially when the birth has been difficult, it is enough to give the ewe a deep bucket containing concentrate, and the lamb will attach itself to the udder while the mother is occupied. Once the ewe lets the lamb suck there is no further problem. Unfortunately, ewes are very stubborn, and if rejection continues she must be placed in an adoption pen in which she is restrained by the neck, can eat and drink, but is unable to turn around to push the lamb away. If the lambs feed satisfactorily, the ewe can be released after 48 hours into a small pen, but even if she accepts the lambs she will need watching for a few days. When the ewe kicks the lambs away or rejects them when she is released, they must be bottle fed.

Fostering

In large, prolific, housed flocks, fostering is not only used in emergencies but also as a management tool. Constant supervision makes it possible to remove a triplet soon after birth, and give it to a ewe which has just had a stillborn lamb or a single. The smallholder with far fewer sheep is lucky if his ewes lamb within hours, let alone within minutes, so that fostering is a more difficult procedure with a lower success rate.

When a lamb needs to be fostered at birth,

and a ewe with a newborn single or dead lamb is available, the foster mother’s birth fluids are rubbed into the lambs’ coat, especially on the head and the rear, the lamb’s legs are tied together and it is given to the foster mother to lick clean Leave the lamb for a while, then release the legs, and watch until it is suckling.

When a lamb is up to 6 hours old,

it is put in a clean dustbin with the foster mother’s lamb, the foster mother’s afterbirth and any other birth fluids. The two lambs are left in the bin for 30 minutes at a distance from the ewe. Then the bin is placed in the pen with the ewe but the lambs are not released and given to her about another 30 minutes. By this time both lambs should smell alike to the ewe and she should allow the foster lamb to suck. Should she reject the lamb, it is removed, fed and hand reared.

Feeding with a stomach tube

A lamb that is too weak to suck but can hold up its head when lying on its stomach, can be fed colostrum through a stomach tube (See Chapter 8, under Medicine Chest). Tube feeding is also used when a healthy lamb is not getting colostrum because the mother has only one teat functioning, has no milk, or has died when no foster mother is available. Immediate bottle feeding is not advisable, as a lamb will find it harder to accustom itself to the foster mother’s teat should a foster mother become available, and weaker lambs may get pneumonia if milk from the bottle gets into the windpipe. Feeding with a stomach tube is not difficult but it is wise to ask someone to demonstrate the technique. After use, the tube and syringes should be washed and disinfected immediately, and kept in an antibacterial solution (Milton or similar) until the next feed.

Feeding newborn lambs

A newborn lamb requires an absolute minimum of three feeds per day at eight hour intervals. On this regime each feed consists of 50 ml per kilo of bodyweight. For a 3 kg lamb this means 3 feeds of 150 ml each, amounting to a total of 450 ml per day. A 4 kg lamb would require 600 ml per day. It is far better to divide the total feed into 4 or 5 feeds per day given at regular intervals, and this is a necessity for lambs that are small or weak.

An average lamb feeds from the ewe 14 times per hour in the first hour, 10 times in the second, half hourly by 8 hours, and hourly at the age of one week. Bags of ewe milk replacer have feeding instructions printed on the bag.
Lambs cannot be fed if they are unable hold up their heads or are unconscious. They will need an injection of glucose into the body cavity, carried out by a vet or an experienced shepherd.

Hypothermia

The normal temperature of a lamb is between 39C and 40C ( 102-104F).

When the temperature is between 37C -- 39C the lamb is suffering from moderate hypothermia, and below 37C the lamb has severe hypothermia. Problems are indicated by any of the following: the lamb does not run to the ewe when disturbed, stands with the head hanging down, has the front and back legs close together and the back slightly arched, or is spending most of the time lying down. The lamb must be inspected and its temperature taken, preferably with a digital thermometer which is easy to read. Unfortunately, hypothermia, due either to exposure or starvation, is a common problem in lambs. Clearly lambs born outside are likely to suffer from exposure, and for this reason may be too weak to suck properly and will die of hypothermia from both causes.

A moderately hypothermic lamb should be dried well, given a feed through a stomach tube and returned to the ewe in a sheltered pen. If it does not start to feed from the ewe it must be fed again with the stomach tube, and then put in a box under an infra-red lamp placed 4ft (120 cm) above it, not lower to avoid scorching. When the lamb has recovered it may be returned to the ewe but if this is so late that she rejects it, the lamb should be hand reared because weak lambs are difficult to foster. Severely hypothermic lambs must be warmed. The best method is with warm air and a thermostat.

When the lamb is less than five hours old it should be dried, warmed till its temperature exceeds 37C, fed with a stomach tube, and returned to the mother. If it has siblings, the other lambs should be removed at the same time and returned with the weakling to avoid its rejection.

A lamb over five hours old that can hold up its head should be tube fed first, then dried, warmed, fed again and returned to the ewe. If it cannot hold up its head it must be warmed before feeding. Lambs that do not improve, and lambs with a high temperature, 41C. and over, may be suffering from other conditions, very possibly infectious, and the vet should be consulted without delay.

Warming methods

Before warming, lambs must be well dried with a towel to prevent heat loss through evaporation. The traditional method of warming a lamb by the kitchen fire is inexact, as is the use of an infra-red lamp, which may cause skin burns as well as overheating the lamb. The best method is to use a thermostatically controlled warming box with a lid, in which the lamb lies upon a grid about halfway up the box, and warm air is blown around it. It is possible to make a similar construction using a strong box, a grid supported on bricks (I use the grid from the barbecue!), a room thermometer and a domestic warm air heater, which is placed outside a hole in the bottom of one side of the box. A close watch must be kept to see that the temperature in the box remains between 35C and 37C, and that the lamb’s temperature is taken regularly, so that it can be fed and returned to its mother as soon as it reaches 37C.

Hand Rearing

Weak lambs should be place in a box with an infra-red lamp as described above. Other lambs should be placed in a sheltered pen with plenty of straw. In very cold weather an infra-red lamp may be hung above the most sheltered corner. Feeding may be by bottle or a lamb bar.

Bottle feeding

involves warming the milk to blood temperature and feeding at regular intervals.

A lamb bar

can be a rack holding several bottles or a bucket with many teats projecting from it. When the lambs are put on the teats every 20 minutes or so, they start drinking from the lamb bar by themselves in considerably less than a day. Lambs feed frequently, taking small amounts, so it is not necessary to heat the milk. The lamb bar is cleaned and re-filled daily.

© 2004. Mary Castell.

From STARTING WITH SHEEP, published by Broad Leys Publishing Ltd