How to wean and prevent mastitis?

[CassyKay]

So, we attempted to separate our ram-lambs recently but it didn't work for two reasons.

First, they kept escaping through the electric fence. That we could probably fix.

However, we also noticed that ewes' udders were staying pretty full and were concerned about mastitis becoming a problem. Most resources tell you to feed poor quality hay, put the ewes on poor quality pasture, or feed less grain. Well, we don't feed any grain or hay, and we don't have any poor quality pasture (we worked hard last year to improve the quality of our pasture, we rotationally graze, and it's spring - everything's lush!).

So for now we are letting them all stay together again. Currently we have four weeks until our youngest ewes will be mature enough to breed and we believe it will be best to have everyone properly separated by that date.

Should we let them stay together until the ewes wean the lambs? What is the risk of mastitis for the ewes on lush pasture if we separate the lambs again?

 

[Alaskan]

I haven't heard this lush pasture/Mastitis connection before.

Mastitis in my experience happens:

-- If the udder gets overly full/engorged and isn't milked off. Usually this happens with abrupt weaning or if a kid dies.

-- some injury on the udder or rough hand or machine milking causes Mastitis

Now it is true that you need good feed to make milk... so if their feed is poor, their milk supply will probably reduce... but I see no reason to do it that way.

So... if you naturally wean then the milk production has been slowly decreasing, and everything should be fine.

 

[CassyKay]

I haven't heard this lush pasture/Mastitis connection before.

Mastitis in my experience happens:

-- If the udder gets overly full/engorged and isn't milked off. Usually this happens with abrupt weaning or if a kid dies.

-- some injury on the udder or rough hand or machine milking causes Mastitis

Now it is true that you need good feed to make milk... so if their feed is poor, their milk supply will probably reduce... but I see no reason to do it that way.

So... if you naturally wean then the milk production has been slowly decreasing, and everything should be fine.

Thank you. Our concern was that they would get overly full/engorged, partly because the nutrition is so good right now and everyone was saying to reduce that nutrition. I'm not sure how abrupt the weaning will be if we separate them completely in another 2-3 weeks. Hopefully that extra time will allow them to do more natural weaning and make it less abrupt.

 

[Alaskan]

The

Thank you. Our concern was that they would get overly full/engorged, partly because the nutrition is so good right now and everyone was saying to reduce that nutrition. I'm not sure how abrupt the weaning will be if we separate them completely in another 2-3 weeks. Hopefully that extra time will allow them to do more natural weaning and make it less abrupt.

Try to entice the lambs to eat as much other stuff as possible... that will help to gradually reduce nursing.

 

[Mike CHS]

We only breed once a year so what we do may not be of any help. We have only been raising sheep for seven years and have never had more than 50 breeders but we don't do anything special when we wean. We give lambs creep feed for a couple of weeks before weaning them but the ewes don't get anything and then we put them where they get hay only. We lamb in order to have them ready for sale in February when most producers are just starting to lamb in our area.