The Wintermutes
Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:22:47 -0700
Ewes can get mastitis any number of ways. The fact your ewe survived this mastitis is amazing. The most common mastitis has a ewe showing a very nice full bag that is actually producing very little if any milk (and is usually hard to the touch). As far as culling you have to decide if the ewe is naturally susceptible to mastitis or just had bad luck. If you see it happening in a family line then by all means cull. If the ewe is one of your barnyard Allstar ewes that out performs all the others it is a harder decision. I raised an "Allstar" ewe that had the bad luck of getting mastitis on her third lambing. She lost half her udder and has since raised twins and is raising two of the three lambs she had this year (triplets, third lamb is a bottle baby). I have seen many ewes raise twins with only half a bag working but they were exceptional mothers. Most ewes either die from mastitis or the entire udder is ruined. It is usually a real bad sign if the udder is too painful for the mother to allow the lambs to milk. In summary, it needs to be a really special ewe not to cull. It is very labor intensive to treat mastitis and treatment usually fails. Bottle babies are also labor intensive. You can buy a lamb for less money than it takes to raise a lamb on milk replacer. It sounds like your ewe tried to wean her big baby and it didn't like the idea! Mark Wintermute Thanks, Mark. Mastitis is the only problem I'd ever heard of involving milk production and I suspected it, but never found any swelling, injury, or lumps. In reading this site: http://www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/mastitis.html I'm seeing that infection even can come from unclean bedding. I also see that you need to cull sheep with this trouble. So my conclusion is, stick with Blackbellies and forget the Great American breed! If it was a bummer lamb injury, it was the ewe's own lamb because that lamb was so big despite being only a couple of months old. All the other lambs were younger and feeding well with their own moms. 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