If you own sheep or goats for any length of time, there is a good chance that you will encounter bottle jaw at some point. As a small ruminant owner, it is essential to know what it is, and what to do about it. Bottle jaw is a puffy accumulation of fluid below the chin of your sheep. It is quite distinctive and obvious when it occurs. It also constitutes a medical emergency.
Though it can be caused by other things, bottle jaw is by far most commonly caused by a blood sucking parasite, the barber pole worm. It is one of the only obvious external symptoms seen in severe barber pole worm infestations. Unfortunately, it does not show up until your animal is at death’s door, and sometimes not at all.
While we are going to talk about treating bottle jaw today, if you are not familiar with barber pole worms, we’d encourage you to take a few minutes to go back and read our series on the topic. There are much better ways to determine your animals parasite status without waiting for them to be ill enough to have bottle jaw.
Unfortunately, even the best shepherd can sometimes be blindsided by parasites.
Everyone needs to know what bottle jaw is and what to do about it. So let’s take a close look at bottle jaw and what you can do to maximize your chances of saving your sheep’s life.
If you have a sheep presenting with bottle jaw, you should immediately check their FAMACHA. Most likely you will find that their mucus membranes are white, indicating that barber pole worms have essentially eaten all of their blood. These animals need to be dewormed immediately following proper deworming protocol. Not tomorrow or next week. Right now, or they will die.
While deworming is the life saving measure, it doesn’t mean your sheep is cured or out of the woods yet. It can take a couple days for all the worms to die. It also takes a very long time to make blood. So while killing the worms stops them from eating any more blood, it doesn’t replace the missing blood. That process takes months. You need to provide supportive care to give the best chance of survival.
As a side note, this scenario is why you should always have proven effective dewormers on hand. Waiting for a shipment to arrive is in many cases going to be too little too late. Deworming with something your parasites are resistant to also won’t be enough to save your sheep. And by the time you find out the dewormer is ineffective, it will be too late.
If the sheep still has a good appetite, they should be provided top quality feed including plenty of protein, iron and B-vitamins to make sure they have the building blocks they need to generate new blood. Remove them from very wormy pastures to allow them time to recover if possible. If they are down and do not have a good appetite, you may need to take more drastic measures.
Sometimes treating the actual bottle jaw symptom can make your sheep feel better so they are more willing to eat on their own.
Though fluid under the chin is most obvious, it is also potentially accumulating in other places, most importantly, the lungs. Working to reduce the edema can help to prevent secondary complications like pneumonia. Something an already sick sheep definitely does not need to be contending with!
To treat the symptom, we need to understand that the fluid accumulating under the skin is mainly due to a protein imbalance in the blood. Thus, a high protein diet is the solution to helping to temporarily relieve the symptoms. Supplement their diet with high protein for a few weeks until their body can rebuild enough blood cells to re-balance itself. If your sheep is still eating well, this can easily be done through feeding extra alfalfa or soybean meal.
If your sheep is down with severe bottle jaw and not eating well, we have had good success at reducing symptoms by syringe feeding them a cup of milk replacer several times a day.
Milk replacer is high in protein and calories. This is true even for adult animals. Sometimes getting a few calories in and reducing the edema so that your sheep doesn’t feel like its drowning is enough to increase appetite and feed intake.
It can also be helpful to dose them with something like Nutridrench which contains propylene glycol for energy. However, don’t overdo propylene glycol, and discontinue its use as soon as possible. It can cause the rumen to shut down which is definitely not something you want. Syringe feeding milk replacer can be discontinued when their appetite has returned and the symptoms have receded. Usually in a week or two. Reduce the amount fed gradually to make sure the symptoms do not return. Be sure to continue to feed them a high protein, nutrient dense diet.
While it will take months to completely replace all the blood the parasites consumed, your sheep should be out of the woods in a week or two, and the bottle jaw symptoms should be gone. Please keep in mind though that it will take months for them to have completely recovered, and they should be monitored closely for a while.
You should start to see a blush of pink on their mucus membranes within a couple weeks.
It is a good idea to monitor their mucus membranes to make sure they are improving. It is also a very good idea to do a fecal egg count 10ish days post deworming. This is to make sure your dewormer was effective and to determine if you should deworm them again. You don’t want them to get loaded down with parasites again before they have a chance to replace all the missing blood cells.
We sincerely hope that you never encounter parasite problems or see bottle jaw in your flock. But it is always good to be prepared for and educated about potential problems before they arrive. If you are unfamiliar with how to deworm, how to check your animals for anemia, or how to determine if a dewormer is effective, our Barber pole worm series has the basics of everything you need to know.
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