Do you have sheep grazing on its knees? One or a whole group that is suddenly lame or limping? Do they keep going lame every time it rains, and then improve when it dries up? If so, there is a good chance you are dealing with foot rot. This is particularly likely to be true if you brought in new sheep recently.
Foot rot is a serious ailment of both sheep and goats. In fact, it is one of the main reasons that may producers get out raising of small ruminants. Foot rot is both highly infectious and highly contagious. It can be very costly, labor intensive, and difficult to get rid of once it gets established in a flock. It can result in lower ewe performance, plus it is extremely painful making it an animal welfare issue.
Every new (or experienced) shepherd should be aware of what foot rot is, how to recognize the symptoms, and how to prevent it from becoming a problem in their flock. It is much easier to keep foot rot out than it is to treat it once it gets established in your flock.
What is foot rot and how to recognize it
Foot rot is caused by a bacteria that has the ability to dissolve skin and hoof tissue. The early stage of foot rot is characterized by irritated, inflamed skin between their toes. The signs might be as subtle as the skin and hair between their heel bulbs looking wet or greasy. The area might also have a white to grayish paste covering it.
Lameness is usually the first symptom that a shepherd sees. It is an early warning sign that you should heed. Lame sheep should be inspected and treated for foot rot immediately if there is any sign of inter-digital irritation no matter how benign it looks. This is particularly true if there is no other obvious cause for their lameness. Most likely the sheep will show signs of lameness when the skin between the toes of the infected foot just looks moist–before it really looks like there is anything obviously wrong with the foot. Sometimes foot rot will also present with a foul smelling odor, but not always.
Left untreated the bacteria will erode away the hoof wall/skin junction and eat their way underneath the hoof wall. This will result in separation of the hoof horn from the underlying tissues. This separation usually starts in the heel works underneath the sole and eventually makes its way to the outer hoof wall. If it goes untreated, the entire claw or hoof can separate from the sheep’s foot leaving them with a stub of tender unprotected tissue where their hoof should be.
As you can imagine having your foot literally rotting off is extremely painful!
There are a variety of different foot rot strains. These strains vary in how aggressive they are. Some strains are considered ‘benign’ foot rot. These bacteria have a limited capacity to penetrate under the hoof and mainly cause irritation of the skin. This type may appear to clear up on its own when the weather dries out, but will return as soon as it rains. On the other end of the scale are highly aggressive strains that can extremely rapidly eat underneath the hoof horn.
There is something also called ‘scald’ that is talked about with foot rot. Technically foot scald is not contagious whereas foot rot is. However foot scald and benign/early stage foot rot look exactly the same. Realistically for all practical purposes foot scald and foot rot are exactly the same thing. You cannot tell them apart without bacterial cultures, and treatment for both is the same.
You have the best chance of treating and actually curing foot rot if you treat it aggressively while it is in in the early stages (before it under runs the hoof wall). Because of this, any sort of inter-digital irritation should be taken seriously and treated as foot rot immediately. Don’t wait for it to prove itself to be contagious.
How does my sheep get foot rot?
Foot rot bacteria lives on/in hooves, and it can live in soil for up to 2 weeks. Warm moist conditions allow the bacteria to multiply rapidly. This is why it reappears when there are wet conditions.
Foot rot can live on sheep hooves indefinitely. It however can not live in the environment for more than 2 weeks. This is why it is said that most often foot rot ‘walks onto your farm on 4 feet’. Contaminated sheep are the most likely source of foot rot infections.
Sheep with foot rot on their hooves spread it to the pasture where other sheep then contaminate their hooves with it. Once the foot rot bacteria is on their feet, a small abrasion of the skin between the toes is all that is necessary to allow the bacteria to invade their foot.
Foot rot prevention is the ideal scenario
If at all possible keep foot rot off your farm and out of your flock. How is this done? You start by thoroughly trimming and examining the hooves of all new sheep. If you see anything that looks like foot rot do not allow that animal onto your property. Do not buy sheep from flocks that have foot rot (even if the sheep does not appear lame). Do not buy sheep that are or have been lame or are from flocks where you note lameness.
Visual inspection is not enough though. You also need to treat every new animal as if it has foot rot whether it does or not. New sheep should have their feet trimmed and soaked in zinc sulfate upon arrival. They should then be quarantined for a month and monitored closely for any signs of foot rot. If it is very dry, try to expose them to wet conditions (the most likely time for foot rot to show up) prior to introducing them to your flock.
Additionally avoid things like using shared trailers that have had lame or foot rot infected sheep on them recently. Do not walk on a farm with foot rot and then go walk in your pasture with contaminated boots. Lastly, do not take any of your animals off the farm to a show or sale and then return them to your flock with out properly quarantining them upon return.
If you discover foot rot in animals you purchased and brought home, implement damage control immediately
Despite your best efforts at prevention, life doesn’t always work like it is supposed to. Sometimes you end up with a problem anyways. So, if you are unlucky enough to bring foot rot to your farm, know you are not alone. And you can get rid of it.
If you do find foot rot, you need to institute damage control efforts immediately. You should isolate the offending sheep to minimize their exposure to your other sheep. Remember foot rot is highly contagious and infectious.
Any lame sheep should immediately be separated from the herd and isolated until you are sure that you have eliminated foot rot from their feet. Don’t treat that sheep and let it stay in the herd, as it may continue to spread foot rot to your other sheep. Sheep who have been lame with foot rot should go through an entire wet season without any signs of lameness before they are considered cured and safe to return to your main flock.
Treating and eradicating foot rot is a flock wide endeavor
Treating one sheep without treating the entire flock is like playing a frustrating game of whack-a-mole. Every time you get wet weather, new lameness cases will show up and require treatment. Remember, the bacteria can live indefinitely on the sheep’s feet waiting for that little abrasion to give it entry. So even if a sheep doesn’t appear lame, it still has foot rot if it has walked through a contaminated pasture.
It is by far best to treat foot rot aggressively in an effort to eradicate it as soon as you realize it is on your farm. If you treat the foot rot while it is a simple skin infection it is very easy to kill all the bacteria.
If you allow it to get established in your flock it will be much harder and will take much longer to eradicate. This is because once foot rot is down deep inside the hoof, it can be walled off into pockets inside the hoof. These pockets of hoof rot bacteria are nearly impossible to get treatment to meaning that these sheep are likely to become chronic repeat offenders that may not respond to treatment and need to be culled.
Foot rot treatment and eradication protocol that worked for us
This is the protocol we used to eliminate foot rot when we accidentally introduced it with the purchase of some lambs. You will need a few different things for this to work. You will also need lots of time to devote to this endeavor.
Plenty of clean pasture is essential
Firstly, you are going to need several clean pastures or paddocks. Clean means they have not had any sheep (or you or any other animal) walking on them for at least 2 weeks. You will need a minimum of 1 new pasture for each group of sheep every week. You need pastures to not rotate back to them before 2 weeks has passed.
Every time you give a foot rot treatment you need to move the animals to clean ground where any foot rot bacteria present has had a chance to die. If you put them back in their contaminated pasture you will not accomplish anything with your treatments.
Zinc sulfate and an area set up to do foot soaks
You will also need zinc sulfate for foot baths. Plus some sort of area or container to use as a foot bath. What you use as a foot bath will vary depending on your needs and situation. In our case we used a large stock tank with cattle panels wrapped around it. This allowed us to move the foot bath to the gate between the old and new pasture every time we soaked feet. They went out of the dirty pasture into one side of the foot bath. Once soaked they went out the other side onto clean pasture. This allowed no chance for them to recontaminate their feet.
Maybe antibiotics–You should check with your vet first
Lastly, you might need antibiotics. LA 200 can work, Zactran is better. If foot rot is caught early antibiotics should not be necessary, however they can be very beneficial for curing chronic cases. In our situation, we opted to give the carrier lambs antibiotics as we wanted to do everything we could to cure them. We knew they had foot rot deep in their feet, so giving antibiotics in combination with topical treatments allowed us to attack the bacteria from all sides.
Steps to eradication
Step 1: Create treatment groups and trim hooves
You need to divide your sheep into groups. You will need at least 2 groups. In our case we divided into 3 groups. At minimum, you need to have an ‘infected’ group and a ‘exposed’ group. The infected group is all the sheep who are lame. Plus it should include those that have been lame or who have feet that show any signs of foot rot. The exposed group is all the sheep who have hooves that look normal, and who are not lame.
In our case we added a 3rd group. The 3rd group was our foot rot carrier group—the lambs that brought us the foot rot. We knew that our main flock did not have any foot rot deep within their hooves, so that treatment to eliminate foot rot in that group would be fairly straightforward. We weren’t so sure about the purchased lambs and opted to keep them as their treatment own group.
While you are inspecting feet to place the sheep into your 2 groups, it is a good idea to trim hooves as needed to expose the foot rot lesions. Do not over trim as it can impede healing. Also be sure to thoroughly disinfect your hands and shears between each sheep so that you are not spreading contamination.
Step 2: Prepare your zinc sulfate foot bath
Create a zinc sulfate foot bath deep enough to completely submerge their feet in. To create the proper concentration of zinc sulfate, you need to mix 8 lbs zinc sulfate with every 10 gallons of water used. If you have trouble dissolving the zinc sulfate, add vinegar to your water. Acidic conditions are required for zinc sulfate to be soluble in water. Continue adding small amounts of vinegar alternating with stirring until the zinc sulfate is completely dissolved.
Zinc sulfate can be reused for the different groups and added to as needed. We opted to scrub our soaking tank inside and out with bleach and restart our foot soaking process with new zinc sulfate each week. We did not want to put sheep from our exposed group (with clean feet) into a tank that hadn’t been cleaned after sheep with known foot rot had been in it last week.
Step 3: Soak your groups starting with the exposed group
Starting soaking with your exposed group. Put the sheep into the foot bath making sure every single foot is in the bath. Soak them for an hour. Once the hour is up move them to a clean dry pasture without letting them walk through any contaminated areas on the way.
Once you have your clean group soaked move onto the infected group. Soak their feet for an hour, and move them onto a clean pasture as well. This should be a separate pasture from your exposed group. In our case we then moved onto our 3rd group and soaked their feet.
For the exposed group, repeat this process again in one week. If no one in that group has gone lame after the 2nd treatment you can consider them ‘cured’, but you need to monitor them very closely for any sign of lameness. If a sheep turns up lame, move the lame sheep to your infected group. Then you need to start over soaking the whole group for 2 weeks again.
For the infected group, you need to soak their feet at least weekly for 8 weeks (or longer). It is best if you could soak them 2-3x a week instead. This is what we did with our offending lambs.
Step 4: Give antibiotics if applicable
As your infected group comes out of the foot bath you should give antibiotics to any sheep that you need to treat this way. If your foot soaks and antibiotics work, you should see lameness improvement fairly quickly, often times within a few days of treatment. Sheep that have had antibiotics and have been soaked for 8 weeks that do not show signs of improvement should be culled.
Step 5: Move sheep to a new group as they heal
As sheep in your infected group cease to be lame, and once their feet show no signs of foot rot you can move them to a 3rd (or in our case 4th) group—your ‘cured’ group. Once your cured group has not shown any signs of lameness for a month they can join the exposed group.
If you do not have the pasture space to have 3 or 4 groups of sheep, you can do this with just 2 groups and skip over moving sheep to a cured group. However, every time there is a relapse, you have to go back to the beginning and soak all of the sheep in the group again. We think it is easier to keep smaller groups of sheep to minimize the number of sheep that have to restart the process in the case of a relapse.
Step 6: Careful monitoring
Once all your sheep have joined the exposed (and should now be foot rot free) group, you move on to the phase of careful monitoring. If at any time foot rot reappears, you have to go back to step one and repeat this process over again.
The entire flock of sheep sheep need to go a whole year without any lameness returning for you to consider foot rot eradicated. The reason for this is that often foot rot can hide and seem cured in dry weather only to reappear in the rainy season.
Curing a flock of foot rot can be a long arduous process that will take a lot of dedication. Though some days it might seem like an impossible task, it CAN BE DONE if you are willing to do the work and culling necessary. It is 100% worth your while to get foot rot off your farm.
A potentially viable alternative to going through this daunting process is to start over. If you have a flock where foot rot is widespread, starting over may actually be the more economical option. It is often recommended to depopulate and have no animals on the farm for a few weeks to allow all the bacteria to die. Then when all the bacteria is dead and the facilities have been cleaned, purchase new sheep from a foot rot free flock rather than trying to cure a chronic flock.
We hope this helps you to keep foot rot out of your flock and off your farm! If you are unlucky enough to buy in foot rot, it doesn’t have to plague you for ever. You can eradicate it with a dedicated, methodical approach of trimming, soaking, isolation and monitoring. Eradicating it as soon as it arrives will save you labor, increase your flock productivity, and your sheep will thank you!
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