Ridgetop
Herd Master
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 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.
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 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.