Hello
Posting here to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. Had quite a few ewes down/die with listeria from silage baled in the wet last summer. However the listeria manifested in a really odd way - it didn't seem to cause neurological symptoms. The ewes would go really thin, go down and then eventually die and or/abort their lambs. Those that didn't die or abort, could have dead/weak lambs. We only know it's listeria due to post-mortems. It seems to have affected about 20% + of the flock (roughly 300 ewes total flock size). Now we know what it is, we are jabbing those that go down with a high dose of antibiotic and it seems to be helping some.
However we are noticing a real issue with milk. The ewes (seemingly the ones unaffected with listeria) that do have healthy lambs are being turned out to nice grass. They seem to have a decent bag and when you tip them, you can easily get decent milk from the teats. The lambs are good suckers. Yet they are starving the lambs off and we are having to top them up most of their milk need constantly. We cannot make sense of it. How can the ewes have milk yet the lambs be starving off when they are sucking? We are potentially making a link to the listeria but cannot find much info online. Anyone shed any light on this?
Thanks
Posting here to see if anyone else has had a similar experience. Had quite a few ewes down/die with listeria from silage baled in the wet last summer. However the listeria manifested in a really odd way - it didn't seem to cause neurological symptoms. The ewes would go really thin, go down and then eventually die and or/abort their lambs. Those that didn't die or abort, could have dead/weak lambs. We only know it's listeria due to post-mortems. It seems to have affected about 20% + of the flock (roughly 300 ewes total flock size). Now we know what it is, we are jabbing those that go down with a high dose of antibiotic and it seems to be helping some.
However we are noticing a real issue with milk. The ewes (seemingly the ones unaffected with listeria) that do have healthy lambs are being turned out to nice grass. They seem to have a decent bag and when you tip them, you can easily get decent milk from the teats. The lambs are good suckers. Yet they are starving the lambs off and we are having to top them up most of their milk need constantly. We cannot make sense of it. How can the ewes have milk yet the lambs be starving off when they are sucking? We are potentially making a link to the listeria but cannot find much info online. Anyone shed any light on this?
Thanks
