Lambs Grinding Teeth?

Ridgetop

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Lamblover: If you don't have it in your flock now, why bring it home? You are just setting yourself and any future sheep to get it. To be honest, buy something else somewhere else. There is no point in buying disease and bringing it in. It also gets into the soil. It is probably the reason the ewes refused to nurse the lambs. Soremouth doesn't just get on the mouth, it can get on and inside the teats and udder, causing the ewe pain so that she will refuse to let the lambs nurse. People who don't have soremouth in their flocks already are told not to vaccinate because the vaccine is live and will infect the entire flock. Once you start vaccinating you have to keep on because the vaccine is caused the disease to now be in your animals. Flocks that have animals with soremouth vaccinate because it is a way to control the disease. It is also contagious to people. Humans can get it from treating the sores without wearing gloves. It is known as orf in humans. I strongly recommend you look elsewhere for a bottle lamb.

Purplequeenvt: Since LambLover doesn't have any sheep yet, why bother with one that already has soremouth. This is not a winning show animal that should be kept because of its genetic heritage.
 

purplequeenvt

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Lamblover: If you don't have it in your flock now, why bring it home? You are just setting yourself and any future sheep to get it. To be honest, buy something else somewhere else. There is no point in buying disease and bringing it in. It also gets into the soil. It is probably the reason the ewes refused to nurse the lambs. Soremouth doesn't just get on the mouth, it can get on and inside the teats and udder, causing the ewe pain so that she will refuse to let the lambs nurse. People who don't have soremouth in their flocks already are told not to vaccinate because the vaccine is live and will infect the entire flock. Once you start vaccinating you have to keep on because the vaccine is caused the disease to now be in your animals. Flocks that have animals with soremouth vaccinate because it is a way to control the disease. It is also contagious to people. Humans can get it from treating the sores without wearing gloves. It is known as orf in humans. I strongly recommend you look elsewhere for a bottle lamb.

Purplequeenvt: Since LambLover doesn't have any sheep yet, why bother with one that already has soremouth. This is not a winning show animal that should be kept because of its genetic heritage.

But if she is only going to have a few pets, why does it matter? It's not like the sheep is going to get sore mouth over and over again. Yeah, maybe if she adds a new sheep, I could get sore mouth, but the virus will runs it's course.
 

Ridgetop

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with a lot of people it starts with just a few pets. then you get interested in livestock or a certain breed and before you know it you have a nice flock of show sheep, or she is breeding some, and now her property is infected with soremouth, along with all future sheep. Before she gets it is the time to avoid it. Why buy trouble? there are enough nice healthy animals out there, don't bother bringing in sick ones.
 

mikiz

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Wow after a quick google/wiki search of orf, I'm with Ridgetop!! I wouldn't bother with an average animal that has that sort of defect, even if I only wanted a few pets. Especially if I only wanted a few pets! I wouldn't want the only few sheep I had to be contaminated like that, even if it is only a short period of time!
 

purplequeenvt

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Well, you all can have your opinion about sore mouth, but I'm not going to change my opinion about it nor my advice Lamblover. She may decide not to buy this lamb with sore mouth and she'll go buy another and won't realize that it too has sore mouth.

Also, not completely positive on this aspect because I've never looked into, but I'm fairly certain that the orf virus lives in the soil. Which means that technically, if she waits to bring her lamb home until after all the scabs have fallen off and the lamb is better, she probably won't "contaminate" her property with anything.

We've been raising sheep for 15 years now. We've had orf in the flock since the beginning and it has never been a big deal. The lambs get it in the spring and a couple weeks later are fine. Occasionally a ewe will develop sores on her udder from it and we have to deal with that, but again, not a big deal. The ewe was fine, the lambs were fine.

Our orf seems to be dying out though. Only 2 out of the entire group got a very mild case.

Almost everyone I know with sheep has sore mouth in the flock and no one is concerned about it unless the sheep come down with during show season.
 

Ridgetop

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Soremouth seems to be a bigger problem in certain parts of the country. We have never had it and my thought is if you don't have it don't bring it in knowingly. On the other hand if you get it, you have to deal with it then. We have never had a problem with abcesses but this year when shearing we found our ram had a bunch of tiny ones on his side. They were not in the sites associated with CL, and he was going to the auction anyway, since we replaced him this year. None of the girls had any lumps at all. Since he runs loose on the large field and we pen the ewes up at night, he probably got the abcesses from stickers in the brush working through his wool. He hangs with the mule most of the time, and only visits his harem when breeding them! Hopefully we will not have a problem next year but if we do, we will test and vaccinate. I wouldn't buy an animal that had abcesses though, and this guy is currently quarantined until the sale next month.
 

Lamb Lover

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Well thank you all, it helps a lot. I haven't gone out to see them in almost a month now due to traveling but I plan to go out possibly this week. I don't even know if I'll be able to find either of them now! I'll probably end up finding a new set of bummers and I'll check for any abnormalities. As for bringing the sick one home if it's no longer active and she has healed, I won't be bringing any more sheep home after these two. I can have up to four where I live but we can only afford to have the two. If I get any more it will be sometime later when we have more property, so as of right now I'm not concerned with it. Thank you though.
 

Lamb Lover

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Hello all! I do have an update, not an exciting one though. I'm going out to hopefully find my lambs this weekend with the help of my cousins and younger brother. If I can't find them I might cry, and then I'll pick two new lambs. I'll be sure to send pictures. However, I am currently occupied by my two new baby bunnies. Long story....
 
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