As you probably know, mastitis is an infection of the mammary gland. The inside of the udder is supposed to be sterile. Mastitis occurs when bacteria has made its way up the teat canal into the udder. Milk, being full of nutrients, is the perfect place for bacteria to thrive. Mastitis is painful for your ewe and can cause loss of production and even death.

Most commonly, mastitis will cause damage and scar tissue to the udder resulting in permanent loss of milk production. The lack of milk production often causes the ewe to need to be culled (or her lambs bottle fed) because she will be unable to produce enough milk to feed her lambs. Thus, it is important to treat mastitis as quickly as possible to minimize the damage occurring. Mastitis is one of the primary reasons animals of prime reproductive age get culled.

How do I know if my ewe has mastitis?

There are two types of mastitis. Clinical and sub-clinical. Common symptoms of clinical mastitis include a swollen, hot, painful to touch udder. Ewes often have a fever, may be off food/ inactive/ acting sick. Clinical mastitis is usually pretty obvious, and it’s also obvious that it needs immediate attention.

Sub-clinical mastitis can be much more difficult to detect. In this case your ewes are not showing outward symptoms of being sick. However, if you did a mastitis test like they do on dairy cows you’d see a high somatic cell count (white blood cells fighting an infection). You might also be able to see flakes or chunks in the milk. There might be able to feel heat in the udder. The milk might look watery and, in some cases, might contain blood. Lambs from these ewes will not be growing as fast as they should be. They are often seen milk stealing from other ewes. Undetected sub-clinical mastitis is where most economic mastitis related losses come from.

Many times in sheep and goats, sub-clinical mastitis goes undetected until the next lambing. By then the damage is done and treatment is too late. These ewes present with only half an udder and are unable to feed both of their lambs. The side of the udder that was infected with mastitis is now hard and filled with scar tissue and produces little to no milk.

Treatment for mastitis

Mastitis treatment is typically with intramammary infusions and or systemic antibiotics. This should be done under the guidance of a veterinarian as there are no mastitis treatments labeled for use in sheep or goats. Mastitis will not cure itself, so don’t take a “wait and see” approach to this painful condition.

How do we prevent mastitis in our sheep?

First and foremost, sanitation. You need to keep everything clean. Your bedding should be clean and dry. If you’re milking your sheep, your hands, and their udders should be cleaned and disinfected before and after milking. Encourage them to stay standing after milking rather than going back to lay down.

Don’t overcrowd your sheep. Closely confined flocks have higher rates of mastitis. Additionally, the bacteria responsible for lamb pneumonia and sore mouth can also cause mastitis. So, keeping your animals outdoors on clean pasture in the fresh air can help reduce mastitis rates.

When you do find an ewe that has developed mastitis, it is important to separate them and their lambs from the rest of the flock. You do not want their lambs spreading mastitis by stealing milk from other ewes. For this reason, milk stealing should be discouraged in your flock, and the dams of lambs set on stealing milk should be checked for mastitis.

You should also go through your flock after weaning and pre-breeding and check udders

Ewes with hard masses in their udders should be culled. These ewes will have poor milk production and may be unable to feed their lambs. Additionally, it is thought that there is a genetic component to mastitis susceptibility, so these ewes that have proven themselves susceptible aren’t something you want in your flock.

It is also important to select for ewes with good udders. Compact, well suspended udders with small teats angled diagonally off the sides are ideal for minimizing mastitis in meat sheep. Unfortunately, these traits are in opposition to what we consider ideal for milking, so it’s a balancing act. If you’d like to read more in depth on udder shape and mastitis, this is an excellent article with diagrams.

Lastly, your ewes should be dried off carefully. Most mastitis cases are seen either in the first few days of lactation or post weaning. Earlier weaning can make ewes more susceptible to mastitis at time of weaning. Ewes that are dried off while producing very little milk are less prone to mastitis. Thus, late weaning and or restricting feed and water intake at time of weaning can help to reduce post weaning mastitis cases.

Unfortunately, this isn’t always enough

As we have learned from extensive research in dairy cows, many of your subclinical ewes and your treated and seemingly ‘cured’ ewes actually have chronic, incurable mastitis caused by Staph aureus. They don’t have symptoms, but even with antibiotic treatment this mastitis cannot be cured. These animals are latent carriers capable of infecting your other ewes either via the bedding or milk stealing.

The unfortunate reality, is that if you have high rates of mastitis in your flock (or have had milk cultures come back with Staph aureus), ewes that have had mastitis should be culled even if they seem ‘cured’. In dairy cows they even recommend culling daughters of infected cows. The heifer calves can become infected from drinking infected milk and or colostrum, and often have Staph aureus infections prior to their first lactation. Consider culling mastitis cases and their daughters, because as we mentioned before there is a genetic component to mastitis susceptibility.

Lastly, if you have a high incidence of mastitis, and you cannot seem to get it under control, you may wish to consider a recently released mastitis vaccine.

The VIMCO vaccine is only registered for use in goats in this country, so should only be used under a veterinarian’s supervision. However, it is licensed for use in sheep in other countries and has been shown to significantly reduce the incidence of mastitis.

Of course, some case of mastitis are inevitable in a breeding flock. However, through good management, careful culling and genetic selection it is possible to maintain mastitis cases at less than 1% in your flock. And if you do have a mastitis problem in your flock, we hope this inspires you to make some management changes to improve animal welfare and to reduce your economic losses.

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The information provided is for general informational purposes only. All information on the site is provided in good faith, for general informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. We make no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability, or completeness of any information on this Site. Accordingly, before taking any actions based upon such information, we encourage you to consult with the appropriate professionals. We do not provide any kind of professional advice. THE USE OR RELIANCE OF ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE SITE IS SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. View full disclaimer here.

The post Keeping Mastitis Out Of Your Flock Of Sheep first appeared on Snowdrop Farm.

Let’s start by stepping back to the beginning. As you likely already know, gestation length for a sheep is about 5 months. If you saw your ewes get bred, you can mark 147 days on the calendar and can loosely predict their lambing date. This takes all the guess work out of it. Unfortunately, sheep are pretty discreet about getting bred, and many times you don’t see the actual event. Nonetheless, there will be signs that your ewe is bred.

The first thing you will notice is that she develops a distinct pregnant shape when you are looking at her from behind.

You can usually start to see this distinct look 2-3 months after they get bred. Keep in mind that ewe lambs typically only have a single lamb and are less likely to look pregnant early on. An adult ewe carrying a single might not look pregnant at all, but those carrying twins or triplets start to look pregnant quickly.

The shape we are describing can be seen in the picture below. She will of course look much rounder than a non-bred ewe, but she also develops a distinct shape due to her anatomy. If we look at the internal anatomy of a sheep from standing behind them we know that their rumen is high on the left side, and the lambs are carried low on the right. In the picture, on our pregnant ewes right side you can see a low lamb belly. Above the lambs is often a sort of straight flat ‘shelf’. The lamb bulge also often protrudes out further from their side than the rumen bulge does.

The next sign you are going to see is udder development

Now, udder development tells us that our ewe is for sure bred, but in our experience it is a terrible predictor of imminent lambing. Some ewes start developing an udder 2 months in advance. Other ewes seemingly fill their udder as the lambs are arriving. We have some of both in our flock though the majority of our ewes are somewhere in between. Most ewes probably make their udder within a couple weeks of lambing.

That being said, we find that our ewes tend to be fairly consistent about when they develop their udder. The ewes that do so 2 months in advance consistently produce an udder early. If you really get to know your ewes you may be able to approximate when they might lamb from their udder. However, we think there are better ways to estimate, and only use udder development as an indication that lambing is getting close so that we should start watching for other signs.

A more reliable predictor in our experience is watching for the ligaments around their tail to loosen

Prior to lambing the ligaments holding the sheep’s hips will loosen in preparation for lambing. This is easy to see. You will notice that she gets sunken spots on either side of her tail head. When this happens, you know that lambing is getting close. We find that in many cases our ewes will lamb within 24 hours of developing deep sunken spots by their tails, but it may be a few days, particularly for some of the older ewes. In some of the younger ewes/ewe lambs, this will be harder to see, and in the case of ewe lambs you might not notice it at all before they lamb.

Again, just like with udder development, the better you know your ewes the more predictable they become. We have an ewe that *seems* ready to drop lambs any minute for about a week prior to lambing. She does this every single year. Other ewes we have sneak out lambs every year.

After her ligaments have loosened, you might also be able to see that the lambs have ‘dropped’

In preparation for birth, the lambs have to line themselves up appropriately. As they do this and prepare to enter the birth canal, your ewes will often develop large sunken spots on their sides right in front of their hips, and a big bulging belly. They might look thinner than they have in a while. If you notice this then you can be sure that your ewe is preparing to lamb.

We don’t personally find that this is always as easy to see as the ligaments loosening. This is probably because the lambs move about during gestation, and your ewes abdomen changes shape depending on the position of the lambs. We also find that some ewes develop much more distinct sunken spots than others do.

If you see an ewe with loose ligaments or sunken areas in front of her hips, start watching her closely for behavioral changes that indicate she is in early labor

Usually when we go out to feed in the morning we can pick out ewes that are likely to lamb that day based on their behavior. Ewes in early labor might not come to breakfast, or they may be slow to come. You might see them standing/laying off by themselves looking uncomfortable. You also might see her pawing the ground frequently or baaing like she is talking to lambs. She will likely also stand up and lay down a lot and shift her weight around on her back feet. Ewes in early labor typically pick a location they plan to lamb in and they keep returning to that spot.

If you see an ewe displaying these behaviors, watch her closely, but do not disturb her. Though it is tempting to get involved, let her be. The majority of ewes can lamb unassisted. If you interfere when its not needed, you can cause more harm than good. Most ewes will progress from early labor to active labor within a few hours, but some will take up to 12 hours. So be patient and give your ewes time and space as long as they are showing no signs of distress.

Usually within 2-6 hours an ewe will progress to active labor

You will know that your ewe has reached active labor when you see the amniotic sac protruding from her vulva. At this point the ewe is close to ready to expel her first lamb. Shortly after the amniotic sac presents you will see your ewe pushing. She will likely lay down on her side, get up, lay down again etc. Leave her be, this is normal. It usually takes about 20-30 minutes for the first lamb to be born. Then your ewe will clean off the first lamb and rest before birthing the second one. Both lambs are typically born within 45-60 minutes.

As your ewe starts to push, the amniotic sac will likely burst. You should see two hooves and then a nose coming out first. This means the lamb is presented properly and the delivery should go smoothly. The only time you should assist your ewes is if the lambs are not presented properly, or the ewe has been straining for more than 30-45 minutes without making any progress. If she is straining and not making any progress, the ewe should be examined and assisted as her lambs might be tangled or presented incorrectly preventing her from expelling them.

Your ewe will clean off the lambs and get them up and nursing. Lambs are usually up within a few minutes of being born looking for their ewe’s udder. She should stand there and allow the lambs to nurse. Once you see the lambs have successfully had their first good feeding you can count your lambing a success!

Once all the lambs are on the ground, you will see material hanging from your ewe’s vulva.

Do not try to remove this material. If you try to pull this material out, you can tear the uterus or the placenta causing her to hemorrhage and bleed to death or retain portions of it inside her uterus. Within the next couple hours, the placentas will be expelled. Though sometimes it can take 24 hours or longer. There will be a placenta expelled for each lamb.

You should examine them and make sure that they are complete and that nothing was retained inside your ewe. Do not be alarmed if she continues to expel some blood for the next several days. This is part of the process of her uterus cleaning itself.

We hope that this helps you to see what a normal lambing process looks like. We didn’t discuss all the problems and complications that could happen. Those will be topics for future articles. Nonetheless, the best way to know when something is going wrong is to understand what normal looks like.

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Please remember

The information provided is for general informational purposes only. All information on the site is provided in good faith, for general informational and educational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional advice. We make no representation or warranty of any kind, express or implied, regarding the accuracy, adequacy, validity, reliability, availability, or completeness of any information on this Site. Accordingly, before taking any actions based upon such information, we encourage you to consult with the appropriate professionals. We do not provide any kind of professional advice. THE USE OR RELIANCE OF ANY INFORMATION CONTAINED ON THE SITE IS SOLELY AT YOUR OWN RISK. View full disclaimer here.

The post Lambing: What To Expect When Your Ewes Start Expecting first appeared on Snowdrop Farm.