Sheep udder problem - help!

[hoyboy]

In the last 2 years we have been getting problems with ewe's udders being hard with little or in the worst cases no milk. There is no correlation to condition or age of the affected ewes. I've even seen it in gimmers.

The hardness in the udder is like a growth under the skin but not attached deeper down. Sometimes only one side is affected. The udder will look healthy, you can't tell anything wrong until you feel it, no discoloration, ewes do not appear ill.

What percentage of my flock is affected - I am not sure. We have 1500 ewes lambing outside on a fairly extensive system. Last year I had taken in about 30, mostly twins that had to be delt with because lambs weren't thriving, most of them were able to raise one lamb so the others were fostered on. Numerous sheep that I had caught to lamb or stuck on back throughout the lambing period showed signs of this udder problem. There could easily be scores of them out there that are not bad enough to be noticeable when she's only feeding a single lamb but more than likely the lamb will not perform as it gets older and demand for milk is higher.

Had vet out last year, postmortem on affected ewes, blood tests. Still none the wiser. This year looking like it's still here, had vet out today to take blood from a sample of ewes to see if anything is abnormal. Of 40 that I had in the race 7 showing signs of this already. We start lambing next week.

Has anyone seen anything like this?

 

[Estate fencing.]

Yes. Had a night mere with it this year on 500 mules lambing inside. 50 have gone out with 1 lamb or no lambs. And now I am getting 4/5 a day with mastitis in the field. Like you said no correlation to age.

 

[RmfJ]

Have had this for many years here but never been able to pinpoint the reason.

 

[tepapa]

Is it not just sub acute Mastitis. Enough to damage some tissue without destroying the whole udder. All the hard lumpy areas won't be producing milk. Should be easy enough to identify ones with lumps and hard udders when going through ewes to keep in the back end.

 

[RmfJ]

No, you can’t pick out sheep which are going to be affected.

 

[Pistonbroke]

Had a heap of them this time and all seem to be texel cross. Thirty pet lambs so far. Good trade on culls though

 

[Guleesh]

We've had something like this, the whole udder is solid at birth of lamb and either no milk or only a tiny amount of milk can be drawn, but this amount will increase if the lamb stays on her long enough to keeps trying. By shearing time the udder is normal again, the same ewes go on and have a normal, healthy udder the following years.

I remember trying to research this further a few years back after having a terrible time of it at lambing but never really got anywhere, a neighbour described it as 'stone udder' and agreed that the udders recover from it, funnily enough we have a gimmer who got tupped early and just lambed yesterday and seems to have it.

The year we had it the worst was with bought in ewes, so I assumed it was some local bacteria or virus that they needed to build immunity to.

I'd love to know more about it.

 

[hoyboy]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yep you definitely can't tell they are bad until lambing time. As you said about a slight improvement if the lamb is left on the ewe. Yes I would agree with this, we had ones where we had to give the lamb a to up from bottle for a few days, maybe even a week or two and the ewe's milk production did improve enough to be able to raise a lamb but I wouldn't say it was a full recovery, milk production was still poor.

've never seen this until the last couple of years. Been lambing sheep here since I was 12. The only thing that I can think of that is a coincidence is that we have been growing 30 acre of neeps on the forage brassica for birds AECS option for past 4 years. Under the rules of the scheme the neeps can't be touched until 1st March. Sheep are on the neeps right up until the point of lambing - is there any way this could be causing problems?

 

[jackstor]

We get a fair few every year, bags look normal but hard, usually just in one quarter. Ewes never been ill, bagged pre tupping. Texel cross ewes.
Had the vets out and they’re not sure what it is.
I wonder if it’s caused when we sell the lambs off them, we start selling lambs end of May, ewes will be full of milk, but they’re never ill. Any with mastitis is culled.
This year we had some slightly different to usual, they had lump in bag but still had some milk. Some managed to rear 2 lambs others couldn’t. Vet took milk samples and it looked like we had some type of bacteria go through them.
They were mainly in one batch and they had been on a stubble turnip field for a couple of weeks before being housed.
Luckily we have a lamb feeder!!

 

[tepapa]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yep you definitely can't tell they are bad until lambing time. As you said about a slight improvement if the lamb is left on the ewe. Yes I would agree with this, we had ones where we had to give the lamb a to up from bottle for a few days, maybe even a week or two and the ewe's milk production did improve enough to be able to raise a lamb but I wouldn't say it was a full recovery, milk production was still poor.

've never seen this until the last couple of years. Been lambing sheep here since I was 12. The only thing that I can think of that is a coincidence is that we have been growing 30 acre of neeps on the forage brassica for birds AECS option for past 4 years. Under the rules of the scheme the neeps can't be touched until 1st March. Sheep are on the neeps right up until the point of lambing - is there any way this could be causing problems?

Yes, no milk and slow to come to milk could be shortage in protein. Neeps are high energy but low protein especially if they've eaten all the tops first. If they've been on neeps only until point of lambing they'll likely be protein deficient. Even if you've been feeding cake it may not be enough or correct type to balance out the energy. What else are they eating?
@neilo would be the one to ask about feeding neeps pre lamb.

You may have a knock on affect. Low milk production early on (big hard dry bags) could be affecting the whole lactation so lambs are pulling on teats more later on once grown and introducing sub clinical mastitis possibly which is why your getting lumps. May not be just one cause of your problems.

 

[hoyboy]

Vet suggested low protein. However before we started growing neeps in a big way all the sheep were just out on the hill getting silage and rumevite blocks. Next to no grass around here until May. Now sheep on neeps, rumevite blocks and silage although they tend to not touch the silage unless it's pretty bad weather. So you'd think they'd be better off now than before. Twins are also on 200g / day of 18% ewe rolls ,

 

[Al R]

Thanks for the replies everyone. Yep you definitely can't tell they are bad until lambing time. As you said about a slight improvement if the lamb is left on the ewe. Yes I would agree with this, we had ones where we had to give the lamb a to up from bottle for a few days, maybe even a week or two and the ewe's milk production did improve enough to be able to raise a lamb but I wouldn't say it was a full recovery, milk production was still poor.

've never seen this until the last couple of years. Been lambing sheep here since I was 12. The only thing that I can think of that is a coincidence is that we have been growing 30 acre of neeps on the forage brassica for birds AECS option for past 4 years. Under the rules of the scheme the neeps can't be touched until 1st March. Sheep are on the neeps right up until the point of lambing - is there any way this could be causing problems?

Neeps being turnips?
all of my twins and triplets go on turnips from scanning until 2 weeks pre lambing, my nightmare this year has been ewes way overfat, as in you couldn’t feel any bones inside the ewes they were so fat. I’ve had zero TLD in these ewes, zero prolapses and I think only 2-3 problems with udders and they were singles anyway.

what breed are the ewes? I notch all females so know what cross/breed they are, I have no Aberfields left that were born in 2015 and 2016, the only problematic udders we’ve had in the last 10 years was with them, they were notched differently to the mules and texelX ewes but were integrated with them and not kept separate so exact same system throughout but the ear notches told us what they were.

 

[CopperBeech]

I have a similar question ..... what would cause a ewe to have lots of colostrum, lambs fat as barrels and then next time round no milk at all abs lambs empty and never get milk, despite no hardness etc ?

 

[Devil's advocate]

We've had something like this, the whole udder is solid at birth of lamb and either no milk or only a tiny amount of milk can be drawn, but this amount will increase if the lamb stays on her long enough to keeps trying. By shearing time the udder is normal again, the same ewes go on and have a normal, healthy udder the following years.

I remember trying to research this further a few years back after having a terrible time of it at lambing but never really got anywhere, a neighbour described it as 'stone udder' and agreed that the udders recover from it, funnily enough we have a gimmer who got tupped early and just lambed yesterday and seems to have it.

The year we had it the worst was with bought in ewes, so I assumed it was some local bacteria or virus that they needed to build immunity to.

I'd love to know more about it.

oxytocin?

 

[hoyboy]

Neeps being swedes. They are Shetland X hill Cheviot.

 

[sheepdogtrail]

I would have your vet rule out ovine progressive pneumonia and maedi-visna. Hard bag with little milk letdown and a low flow can be a symptom. They are caused by lentiviruses.

I would guess it is not one of the above, but you should know for sure by looking into it.

 

[sheepdogtrail]

I have a similar question ..... what would cause a ewe to have lots of colostrum, lambs fat as barrels and then next time round no milk at all abs lambs empty and never get milk, despite no hardness etc ?

Stress will cause that. Do you feel the ewes have enough space during lambing to find a soluntary spot to have lambs without being bothered? Do the ewes know all of your help and dogs?