I've had a lot more prolapses than normal this year. I usually feed the usual rate of cake out of a snacker to them and get the odd one or two but this year we are all grass and have had over 5% prolapses and I think 3 with guts out. Bloody depressing and frustrating. I assumed it was just them eating more bulky food instead of the concentrates but it doesn't seem to be. It's a mix of ages and body conditions so nothing I could pin down.Was an interesting section in the booklet @easyram1 gave us from the guy who came over and spoke with @Global ovine ref prolapse.
Talked of the relationship of various trace elements inc mag and calcium on prolapse, and the effect of uptake of said elements by grass growing in colder conditions.
It's certainly been a colder spring, until now. Interested to see if cases tail off going forward now.
Was told by someone in my grazing group about that booklet and I'd forgotten I had it. Put out magnesium minerals for them and on advice from someone in the grazing group put out rock salt and it seems to have stopped. The magnesium helps the ewes to mobilise the calcium in their bones and the sodium in the salt helps make the calcium and magnesium more readily available to them.
It's probably been made worse by me plastering the silage fields with muck last year and then feeding the silage to the ewes over winter. Can't remember why without looking it up but something to do with the potassium in the muck affecting the calcium in the feed.