Can you tell if a Ewe is pregnant w/o Ultra sound?

[Britgoes2market]

Hi all! Long story short, we paid big money for a ram that was supposed to breed our girls to raise for 4h lambs for our friends and family. We put him in with our ewes mid September and took him out late October. Come November-we took a tractor to our barn to clean it out before the winter and our ram was remounting all our supposedly bred ewes. I'm crushed. We had a gal who was scheduled to come out and ultra sound our girls, no babies. After doing some research, we had a really hot July/August. Some folks said the temps could have made him temporarily sterile. He is very eager to breed the girls when it appears they are in heat, however, its now December and it doesn't appear that he is interested in any of them anymore, so I'm assuming they might be pregnant? Can you tell if a ewe is pregnant by her vulva alone in early stage?

 

[Mini Horses]

I know of no way, as you describe. P-test strips if they are tame or can be contained or handled.

 

[Baymule]

Sounds like a classic heat temperature fail. Ram bred them again and now he is not interested, they are more than likely bred.

I had the same problem, spring breeding, got one lamb, 2 are hugely pregnant, the rest are open. Disappointed. But-I moved right before that, then moved again 6 months later, breeding schedule is screwed up. Have 8 open, they are about to meet their new Baby Daddy.

 

[farmerjan]

Most any vet that works with any farm animals can do what we call a BSE.... breeding soundness exam. I have a friend that milks on a dairy and he has sheep and he has his rams done every year. They get a semen sample and check it under a microscope for sperm count and motility... in other words, make sure he is fertile and not shooting blanks. If the ram is a high dollar one you might want to get him checked.

That said, the heat will affect them and he could very well have gone through a short spell of not producing any viable sperm and then recovered so got them on the later go round. I do not have any experience with the p-strips that the other members have gotten and are using. Gotta be cheaper than another set of ultrasounds... but the ultrasounds are very accurate. All our preg checks on the cattle are done ultrasound now by the vet we are using. Used to be just palpation... and some vets are very very good at it. Of course, sheep cannot be palpated like cows so the ultrasound is the way to go. I hope it was a temporary thing, but will this throw off your plans for 4-H lambs for show? Sorry it happened....sometimes it is hard to manipulate the weather to our liking.....

We had a bull that we turned out with about 30 cows with new calves in the spring, so they could get bred back for the next year's calves.... Brought them all home 7-8 months later, to wean off calves and preg check.... long story short, 6 were 6 months pregnant and the rest OPEN.... that is a whole years worth of work... and income ..... GONE..... Something happened to the bull....and it wasn't like he recovered and there were a bunch that were 2-3-4 months bred either.... we shipped him, sold a few of the older ones, and sucked it up and put 2 bulls in with the rest and all but 2 were bred 50-65 days when we rechecked....
Moral of the story, sometimes they check out okay and then something happens too....