Tag Archives: lambs

Natural Remedies: Toxemia/Twin Lambing Disease in Sheep

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Prevention, Symptoms, and Treatment

PREVENTION AND CAUSE

The best prevention is to keep your sheep’s minerals up, especially calcium, so it doesn’t happen in the first place. The cause of the disease is inadequate nutrition during pregnancy, and not enough nutrient and minerals for the ewe and the lambs.

SYMPTOMS

Symptoms include: lack of appetite or going off feed totally, no energy toward the end of pregnancy, sweet smelling breath, muscle twitching, poor muscle control and poor balance, head hangs low/droops, and grinding teeth.

If you start to see a ewe have these symptoms, take action RIGHT AWAY! If you don’t she could lose her lambs and/or die herself.

It is important the help her QUICKLY!

TREATMENT

Take her away from the flock, and keep her by herself. Keep her where you can monitor her frequently. You must do the following, even through the night, to save her and the lambs lives.

Give her 8ml of Nutri-Drench ASAP, every 2 hours

Nutri-Drench is something we keep on hand on our ranch, all the time. We give it to any animal that is feeling under the weather and to newborn lambs, kids, and calves.

Also give one teaspoon of Natural Vitality Calm plus Calcium in water, every 2 hours.

Feed free choice (as much as she once available at all times) Kelp and all the good quality hay she will eat with molasses on it. Since this disease is related to low blood sugar, the molasses is important to help keep it up.

You also want to give her free choice grain, until she gets her appetite back.

It is important to also give her Vit B shots, this will stimulate her appetite. Give the amount the instructions on the bottle recommend. We gave it 2-3 times a day, until she started eating again, and then gave it once a day for a until she lambed.

CONCLUSION

This is what we did for one of our ewes when she had this sickness. We are thankful to God, that she recovered and her and her lambs survived. She had two beautiful ewe lambs.

REMINDER

The next year, we learned, and kept her up on her minerals. She had twins again, but this time with no troubles at all. Praise Yehovah! Remember, if you keep their minerals up, this won’t be a problem.

We set minerals out for them to have free choice. These are the minerals we use. Click on the mineral for a link to where you can find them.

Kelp (depending on how much you have out, they usually have this one empty right away!)

Copper Sulfate (sheep do need copper, and will take what they know they need)

Redmond Livestock salt

Dolomite (make sure the calcium content is higher than the magnesium content),

Yellow dusting sulfur

We also feed Non-GMO alfalfa pellets (high in calcium) with their grain ration (Non-GMO Corn/Wheat) for the last six weeks of pregnancy, to help keep up their calcium levels and prevent blood sugar problems and toxemia.

Orf AKA Soremouth or Scabby Mouth

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Orf occurs in young kids and lambs. They can also give it to their mothers, if they are nursing.

WARNING: This ailment is zoonotic, meaning it can spread to humans. Always wear gloves when treating affected animals.

Symptoms:

Orf is a herpes linked organism, that shows up as pimples or sores. The sores will be found on the noses and mouth of young lambs/kids and the udders of their mothers.

Cause:

The leading cause is copper deficiency. So, the best prevention, is to see that your animals copper levels are correct. This plays a role in many ailments, including internal parasites.

Treatment:

Of course, give them supplemental copper. No, copper does not kill sheep. They need it, just in smaller amounts. You should keep dolomite on hand in case of a overdose, as dolomite is the antidote to a copper overdose.

Since we had other lambs and kids on the ground at the time, We made sure to up their copper. That way the issue would not occur with the other animals, and it did not spread beyond one lamb and his mother Had we been sure they had gotten their minerals, the problem would not have occurred in the first place.

To clear up the sores, we personally used WD-40 directly on the scabs. They dried and cleared up within a week.

Another treatment we did not personally use, but it said to have worked for others and is more natural:

3 tsp copper sulfate

3 tsp vinegar

mix into a gallon bucket of water, and use as a dip for all affected

Again, prevention is better than a cure! Keep up those minerals for your livestock and yourself!