Re: [Blackbelly] one udder

[The Wintermutes]

Hi Rick,

What you have described is mastitis.  I have had two ewes have this problem
where the mastitis killed one side of the bag.  I gave a lot of penicillin
injections into the bad side of the bag to keep down infection.  I also
helped the bag come off with some barnyard surgery.

The good news is the ewe can still have lambs.  Check the remaining side of
the udder and make sure it is still good and not hard.  If the remaining
side is still good and the ewe is a good mother she can still raise twins.
It would be a good idea to keep a very close eye on the lambs to make sure
they are getting enough milk.  Mastitis is hard to keep contained to just
one side of an udder but can be done.

I found the biggest reason for mastitis is bummer lambs mugging a ewe for a
meal.  They bite the teat to hang on and the ewe literally drags these lambs
around.  The teats get injured and then infection sets in leading to
mastitis.  I have learned the hard way to grab these bummer lambs and
separate them away from the moms ASAP.

Mark Wintermute 




I had a somewhat strange thing happen to a ewe this spring.  She literally
lost an udder.  The ewe had been nursing one lamb for a couple of months
until one morning when she started acted sluggish and stopped nursing.  I
couldn't see anything different on her or find any injuries and I looked at
her udder carefully.  She lay down and didn't move much for nearly a week.
She wasn't much interested in food or water either.  When she finally
started to recover, she had lost a lot of weight, and I could see that one
side of her udder had begun to rot away.  I figured that was the end of her,
but she seems to have survived it.  There is a hairless dark patch where the
udder used to be, and she is back to normal, along with now being a nice
trimmed size.  (She was a fat, Great American breed.)

Is this at all common for any kind of livestock to have a part of their body
rot away and fall off?  I am so surprised that I almost want to keep her to
see if she can still produce and nurse lambs next year, but maybe that is
not the most logical, practical thing to do?


Rick Krach
Auburn, California
(530) 889-1488


_______________________________________________
This message is from the Blackbelly mailing list
Visit the list's homepage at %http://www.blackbellysheep.info