Southdown
Loving the herd life
- Joined
- Jan 27, 2012
- Messages
- 340
- Reaction score
- 27
- Points
- 148
Tonight was absolutely terrible! Leroy our yearling ram suddenly died. We have no idea why or what happened. I am so depressed about it and completely confused. We let him out with our older ram tonight to go graze on pasture for the first time since last Fall. So we walked them over to the fenced pasture and let the two of them inside to eat. We should have waited and watched them for a few minutes, but we left right away to go let some other sheep out to a different area. We were watching the other sheep grazing and came back maybe 20 minutes later, only to find Leroy dead! He was laying on his side, tongue hanging out, and bright green liquid oozing out of the mouth and nostrils. He was not breathing, but still warm. We had just let them out only 20 minutes or so ago. I just really need to know what happened. He was only one year old, current on CDT vaccinations. My first thought was that maybe the other ram killed him. The other ram is much bigger and maybe they fought once they had room to run. But my husband thinks that if they fought, he wouldn't have died so quickly. I'm not sure. On the other hand, I was wondering if sheep can get bloat like dogs do? The fact that he had stomach contents oozing out and he also had defecated. Another idea I had was maybe he got so excited about the fresh grass that he choked on it and suffocated? My husband thought maybe he could have had a heart attack. I honestly don't know much about sheep diseases. Gosh, this is so hard for me. We've had lambs die, but never a grown sheep yet. Please, any ideas on what could have caused his death?