Thin inlamb ewes

[cheggars]

A Friends Housed twin lamb ewes are Rapidly Loosing weight/condition despite getting fed very well with silage and high quality Nuts (his ewes are usually overfat if anything) . Post postmortems, blood tests have so far failed to find any thing wrong so far. Mineral levels are good in the blood.
He's Currently waiting for some results back from yet another postmortem from the Lab.
Any one got any ideas what might be causing the weight loss.

Thanks
Ps . He says the ewes are always ravenous, Continually at the trough looking for food and rarely lying down Happily.

 

[alwayslearning]

Hill breed?
Are they eating the silage

 

[cheggars]

No Mostly Mules / texelcrosses/suffolk Normally some of the best ewes around. Yes silage add lib. thinks some have been put on Straw now to try.

 

[Downton_shep]

Fluke would be the obvious thought but easy to see in PM.

 

[GTB]

I would have suggested fluke but the pm should have spotted that. Ours were very lean coming in and we've been feeding them all as if they were twins and they have gained condition now. Maybe your friend's silage is not as good as he thinks?

 

[yellowbelly]

Is the silage in tight bales in ring feeders?

In the 70's, when we first started making big bale silage, a customer of ours was having similar trouble. PM's showed up nothing- just thin ewes dying.

They got a bale unroller and straight away pens that were eating a bale a week were eating two bales a week - the bales were too tight for them to pull it out easily and the sheep would rather die than work for their grub.

 

[cheggars]

They will be getting more than enough nuts to compensate for poor silage I'd have said. His triblet ewes are doing fine on the same diet.
Fluke would have been my first though also but thats been eliminated.
It was a problem we had here and lung worm we've had bad this time .
His dont have either. The ewes were looking well when they where housed 3 weeks ago.

 

[GTB]

Not johnes I hope? We had a couple of those years ago. They'd eat like mad yet still wither away.

Edit: ewes with johnes don't scour like cattle do and the test done at pm is quite specific IIRC so I'd say worth checking if the lab tested for it or not.

 

[ajcc]

Maybe the cake is not as good as he/you think?? Water readily accessible? What’s dung like? What’s feeding regime, if he says they’re always hungry? What bedded on? Back to basics until you get evidenced veterinary diagnosis.
Suspect they came in a lot thinner than he says, how far off lambing, twin lamb disease?
Just speculating/guessing.

 

[neilo]

Haemonchus/barber pole worm might be another thing to look for? But again, the PM's should have shown that up easily.

Rumen fluke?

 

[milkloss]

Are they drinking water? Do they have enough feed space for the silage and how much silage are they eating? When are they lambing? I would be surprised if they are really that hungry if they are twins as they won’t have the gut volume available if silage is ad-lib and edible.

 

[cheggars]

They just starting to lamb now.
They where in good nick coming in.
Didnt know that sheep could get johnes or lung worm for that matter.
They've had cydectin so that should have removed most things.
Rumen fluke is a possibility i suppose.

 

[milkloss]

OPA? Don’t know much about it tbh.

 

[Devil's advocate]

I may be wrong.

Overfeeding in mid pregnancy leading to a large placenta, which is now demanding nutriets from the ewe. Leading to rapid condition loss & a higher than normal proportion of TWLD.

 

[spin cycle]

Haemonchus/barber pole worm might be another thing to look for? But again, the PM's should have shown that up easily.

Rumen fluke?

haemonchus is a b'stard to diagnose without pm

 

[jemski]

I may be wrong.

Overfeeding in mid pregnancy leading to a large placenta, which is now demanding nutriets from the ewe. Leading to rapid condition loss & a higher than normal proportion of TWLD.

I think overfeeding mid pregnancy actually results in a smaller placenta for some reason.

 

[neilo]

I think overfeeding mid pregnancy actually results in a smaller placenta for some reason.

That’s what I was always led to believe too.

 

[Ysgythan]

They just starting to lamb now.
They where in good nick coming in.
Didnt know that sheep could get johnes or lung worm for that matter.
They've had cydectin so that should have removed most things.
Rumen fluke is a possibility i suppose.

Long acting Cydectin? Are you supposed to give that to pregnant ewes? Doesn’t it cause resistance?