Chris,
Your letter about the breeder with several limping ewes from the dorper/katahdin flock sent up an emergency red flag for me. A few years ago, I bought katahdins from a local dorper/katahdin breeder. Several were limping, and he told me the same thing -- it had been wet lately.
However, those sheep actually came in with contagious footrot. For one and one-half years I battled the horrible disease. I ended up culling all the purebred katahdins that I had purchased (11 adult ewes and one wonderful ram), and also the three lambs that were born on my property, to the sale barn for slaughter. The lambs had developed footrot shortly after birth. The footrot also got into my barbado flock, and I had to cull several of those too.
For 18 months, I gave injections, trimmed feet madly, disinfected daily, kept meticulous records of individual sheep with recurrences, quarantined at several levels (very bad, slightly bad, possibly a problem, and OK), made the entire flock stand in a footbath nightly (the treatments took 4 hours per night, every night for over a year). Slowly, after heartbreaking culling, I began to reduce the problem sheep to just a few. After 18 months, I culled the last two sheep (two barbado wethers), and it was a hard choice because they both just had a little pinkness between their hooves. But it had to be done, as they were on the record for several times of "recurrent" problems.
I do not know where you live, but the sheep breeder who sold me the katahdins lives within 15 miles of me. He does not care whether his flock have good feet or not. He mostly sells for production, and he sells to the ethnic market, so it doesn't matter that his sheep have foot diseases. As far as I know, he does absolutely nothing to take care of his sheep feet. But the bad part is, he also sells dorper/katahdin crosses to other breeders who are looking for purebreds or for that cross in rams or ewes to start a breeding flock. PLEASE BE CAREFUL IF YOU BUY FROM HIM, OR SOMEONE WITH A SIMILAR SITUATION! If you get footrot in your flock, you'll be in for the battle of your life. And it doesn't matter whether your own home pastures are wet or dry. The infected sheep will bring the disease in with them.
It has been almost 2 years since I overcame the footrot epidemic on my farm. Only stubbornness on my part and perseverence allowed me to win out. My friend and neighber also battled it many years ago. He and his wife went from 35 sheep down to 5 sheep in one year because of the disease. They had to cull everything to save anything. We are both very careful about having not only other sheep on our premises, but even having visitors here from other farms where the disease might exist. If you have seen sheep farmers or university farm situations where they ask you to slip on some disposable plastic boot covers before you come into their pasture as a visitor, that is the reason why.
Again, Chris, please be careful what you bring in. You should not hesitate to examine the feet of his sheep before you buy any of them. If you lift a foot of a limper and smell a nasty rotten smell between the halves of the foot, that is footrot. Get down close to the hoof and stick your nose a few inches from it. A healthy foot just has an earthy smell. This is an unmistakable smell of something dead. Even if you cannot smell it, it may be there in its beginning stages if you see inflamed pink or red tissue, or other symptoms. The hoof wall will become separated from the soft tissue many times, and there is literally rotten tissue in both the hoof and the soft parts. If the breeder hesitates to discuss this with you, it would probably be better if you seek out another breeder, even if you have to drive further.
Good luck to you in whatever you decide to do!
Sincerely, Mary Swindell
At 12:01 PM 09/04/2004 -0600, you wrote:
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Message: 3 From: "William Buchanan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 10:58:28 -0500 Subject: [blackbelly] Sore feet/hooves? Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I went to look at possibly buying a dorper/katahdin cross ram to use on some of my ewes for freezer lambs. One thing I noticed was several of his ewes(out of 100) were limping. I asked him about it and he said it was due to all the rain. His land is fairly low-lying and we have had an unusually large amount rain this year. He said they get sore hooves when they don't have a chance to dry out. Makes sense to me but I thought I had better ask the list.
Anyone have any experience with this? Is there a contagious disease I need to be worried about? My land is "high-ground" hilly with bluffs and I never have any problems with standing water and such, so if it isn't contagious, it will probably clear up on my place. My sheep are very healthy, no health problems at all. Obviously I don't want to introduce anything bad for my sheep.
Do I need to take him by the vet on my way home and get him some shots or something?
My BBs have spoiled me I guess and have no experience with this.
Thanks, Chris
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Message: 4 From: "hlang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: [blackbelly] Sore feet/hooves? Date: Sat, 4 Sep 2004 09:35:08 -0700 Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
The sheep need more zinc, may copper is as well too low. Regards Helmut ----- Original Message ----- From: "William Buchanan" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Saturday, September 04, 2004 8:58 AM Subject: [blackbelly] Sore feet/hooves?
> > > I went to look at possibly buying a dorper/katahdin cross ram to use on > some of my ewes for freezer lambs. One thing I noticed was several of > his ewes(out of 100) were limping. I asked him about it and he said it > was due to all the rain. His land is fairly low-lying and we have had an > unusually large amount rain this year. He said they get sore hooves when > they don't have a chance to dry out. > Makes sense to me but I thought I had better ask the list. > > Anyone have any experience with this? Is there a contagious disease I > need to be worried about? My land is "high-ground" hilly with bluffs and > I never have any problems with standing water and such, so if it isn't > contagious, it will probably clear up on my place. My sheep are very > healthy, no health problems at all. Obviously I don't want to introduce > anything bad for my sheep. > > Do I need to take him by the vet on my way home and get him some shots > or something? > > My BBs have spoiled me I guess and have no experience with this. > > Thanks, > Chris
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