Ewe not wanting lambs to nurse

Ridgetop

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You need to be milking this ewe right now. As to the clogged teat, it sounds like she could be starting mastitis. Use warm cloths on her udder to relieve her and milk several times a day till she milks clean and strong on that side and the udder is pliable and soft after milking. Gentle massaging of the clogged side will also help. If she continues to have a problem on that side, you should treat for mastitis. There are several mastitis treatments on the market for lactating animals. (Try Jeffers online if you don't have a dairy supply store near you.) There is also a treatment to give when you dry them up. I would definitely give her one of those treatments when you finally finish her lactation. After drying up our does, we used to do a Dry Cow treatment on each one at the end of their lactation.

If you can get her to milk on that side and keep her milking well until time to dry off she should be ok. I would still treat her with a mastitis treatment for dry dairy animals at the end of her lactation to make sure that she freshens properly next year. Don't worry about the lambs, they can be weaned now. You don't want them nursing on her if she is getting mastitis - First, it will hurt and she will not let them near the udder. Second, each time they nurse they are letting germs in the teat opening and can spread the mastitis quickly to the other half of the udder. You need to pull them off the ewe and not let them nurse. You can give them a little grain separately from mom.

If you are planning on using this ewe as a dairy animal, you should be milking regularly every 12 hours. You need to weigh the milk and feed lb for lb grain for milk to keep lactation up. Once she is producing regularly, start to slack off on the grain until her milk yield starts to dip. Then add just a little grain back until the milk level stabilizes at the top yield point. She is a dairy sheep, so you must treat her as any dairy animal. That means regular milking every day every 12 hours. Milking irregularly or only 1x per day will cause the milk yield to decrease. Lactation levels increase to meet the demands of the babies. This means that the more milk you take from her the more she will produce to the limit of the nutrition you are feeding her. Since she is on good pasture, you will want to put her on a grain supplement to keep her in lactation for 10 months. At that point, she should be about 3 months pregnant and you will want to dry her off before she lambs again.

Order a mastitis test kit and test strips too. You can test for mastitis yourself and get a preliminary idea. Then take the milk to a lab for testing if you have one near you. I had to drive 2 hours to the closest lab, so it was really important to us to use a good iodine udder wash and teat dip before and after milking. I kept mastitis tubes on hand as part of my medical supply so I could treat immediately. We only had a couple of cases of mastitis in 15 years and I think it was because we were so careful. I worry about my sheep now because they nurse their lambs and of course, I can't udder wash and teat dip before and after they nurse! LOL:lol: We did have a Suffolk ewe that was given to us who lambed with mastitis on one side and ended up raising healthy twin lambs on half an udder! We had 1 case of black mastitis in a beautiful FF and she lost her udder and died in 2 days in spite of everything we and the vet did for her. Mastitis is nothing to fool around with in dairy animals.

Hope to hear good news next posting.

By the way, I keep mastitis tubes on hand now too - I use them to treat puncture wounds on my other animals. They work great and since they are a long skinny tube they get the antibiotic up inside the puncture.
 

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Gosh, hope you're not dealing with punctures all that often @Ridgetop I'd rather deal with cuts over punctures any day of the week. Much easier to care for, keep clean, and heal up without issues.
 

Ridgetop

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Yes, I agree. The mastitis tube trick is one I got from Erick Conard who uses it in his Anatolians when they have a serious disagreement. Here is another one from my old vet, RIP. About 5 years ago my 30 year old mare fell down a gully while trying to reach green grass on the other side of a fence. She got up and walked up the road home, but had a deep puncture in her armpit. We thought we had found all her cuts and doctored them with iodine. Three days later she had a bad infection an we trailered her to the vet. She was in horse hospital for several days then they sent her home with instructions to hose off the area several times a day. I had a new vet come to the house to check her since it did not clear up, kept draining. He was an old guy, used to be a farrier, and taught me some good tricks which I have added to my list of emergency and cheap doctoring med kit.

He used an old Water Pic (yes, the dental thing) and had me fill it with diluted iodine wash then stick the nozzle in the hole which was 3-4 inches deep, and wash out the pus that kept forming. I had to do this 3 or 4 times a day. The first day we used a twitch but after a couple days she stood quiet while I crawled under her belly to work on her. A lot more work went into it but she healed up just fine. He also used an old coffee grinder to grind the antibiotics and Bute so I could drench her since she wouldn't take the whole dose in a mash.

Later another acquaintance told me that she had a horse run in on a stake and get a big puncture in her chest that wouldn't stop bleeding. She washed out the wound with disinfectant and packed the puncture with a tampon smeared with Neosporin till the vet could get out. He didn't want to sew up a puncture, so just put the horse on antibiotics. She kept doing the tampon thing to keep the wound from closing on the top and getting infection underneath till it started healing from the inside out. Horse healed fine.. I keep tampons and kotex pads in my emergency kit now since they work so well as thick absorbent pads for wounds. Also stock the kit with lots of vet wrap that I pick up whenever on sale.

So many household things you can use in an emergency - we also sewed up a ewe's prolapse with my grandmother's old curved carpet needle and dental floss.

We should start a thread about emergency treatments with what you have on hand since lots of us don't have access to a vet with specialized knowledge about some of our animals.
 

Donna R. Raybon

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Hydro therapy is what my vet called it. Used the spray nozzle on the hose and several times a day hosed out the wound until I saw pink flesh. Managed a horse farm for several years and had a world of wounds to doctor mostly due to owner's grandchildren forgetting to shut doors/gates.

Another one was using a baby diaper as a 'wet to dry' bandage. Used the diaper as a pad, then vet wrapped it up. That was not on a puncture, but on large areas where proud flesh was a threat.
On sheep and goats, make sure it it not contagious abscess though, when you find a lump, bump, or draining hole. Did have a goat years ago that had a wolf in her back. That was just before time that ivomec became dewormer of choice. Back in my childhood there was a designated coke bottle for wolf removal on the cow's backs.
 

Jennifer Hinkle

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There is so much good information on here about using household items in an emergency. I don't have much experience with these things. It would be nice if someone did start a thread about it. It would be helpful.
 

Donna R. Raybon

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Badmitton or tennis racket for bumblebees that nest in hay. I love bees, understand their vital importance to our food supply. However, they are the very devil when defending their nest in hayloft. In early spring, use racket to wack and they never establish a nest. These are not 'wood bees' (which don't threaten to sting you .)

Electric coffee grinder that you can find for a couple dollars at thrift stores. Great for grinding meds, etc...

Electric tea kettle. Hot water at your finger tips as long as your barn has electricity. Again, a few dollars at thrift store.

Gas X tablets for bloat. Look for active ingredient of simithicone. In a pinch liquid fabric softener will work, too.

Stanley lock blade knife for trimming hoofs. You want the 'sheep's foot blade.) Available for about $10 at hardware stores. NEVER use a pocket knife without a locking blade!!! If blade folds up on you (and without a locking blade it will!) you get badly cut.

Baby monitor!! Oh how I loved mine during winter time kidding season!! I could lay in my warm bed and be awake in an instant when I heard that very distinctive 'I am in labor' grunt a doe gives.

Tums to treat/prevent milk fever.

Just a few of my favorites.
 

Ridgetop

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Mystang - Weighing the milk and lb for lb grain for milk. . . . With any form of farming or ranching the object is to get the most return for your work and $$ spent. Now, most of us are not in this for the money :lol: but you still want to make sure you are getting the most out of your stock etc. without hormones, drugs, etc. Dairy farmers have come up with ways to increase production without spending more than necessary.

We all know that with dairy animals the goal is to produce the most amount of milk per animal per lactation for the amount of feed you are putting into her. You need your goat/ewe/cow to give you as much milk as she physically can, every time you milk her, and for as long as possible. Milk is $$ for dairy people.

A normal dairy lactation lasts for 10 months, I am talking about goats and dairy ewes here. That means you will breed the animal while she is milking and keep milking her, drying her off 2 months before she kids or lambs again. To produce that much milk daily she needs a high degree of protein and water to stay healthy. Since she is a ruminant, she will need a lot of roughage - either pasture, forage, or hay. That is not going to be enough protein for her to produce for 10 months so you add grain to her feed. The best way to give her grain is on the milking stand while you are milking. Not only will it keep her quiet and happy while you are milking, but you can measure the amount of grain you are going to give her.

You need a milk scale which is a hanging scale with a hook on it to suspend the pail of milk from. You adjust the weight to zero with the empty pail on the scale. After you milk the goat you hang the pail on the scale and you will see how many lbs. of mill she has given you at that milking. It is vital to weigh the milk and keep track every am and pm. However many lbs. of mill she gives is the amount of lbs. you will give her on the stanchion when you milk her. If you are really into it, you can "challenge After kidding her milk yield will increase so you increase her grain until her milk weight stays the same for a week. Then you gradually decrease the amount of grain by a quarter cup until you notice a slight dip in the yield. Immediately go to the amount you were giving on the last day her yield was higher. You have found the exact amount of grain she needs for her best lactation. At the end of her lactation, decrease the grain before you dry her off. By her last milking she should not be getting any grain at all. This will help her dry up faster too.

Mystang: Puncture wounds are holes instead of tears. Dog bites are usually punctures, horns cause puncture, fence wire causes punctures, etc. You don't want them to heal on the top because puncture can develope infection inside and make a ginormous abcess. Most vets will not suture punctures.

Does that explain better?
 

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