# sick bummer lamb



## gracie88 (May 29, 2007)

So I got this lamb, and brought it home and now it's got diarrhea, and it's pretty droopy. I've never raised a lamb before. I've had bottle calves with scours (that happened regularly), is this the same sort of thing?? The lady I got him from suggested Gatorade, is there anything else I can be doing for/to him? He's so little, and seems so much more fragile than a calf, although I see them out in fields in the rain all over the valley, so I know they're not that delicate.


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## RiverPines (Dec 12, 2006)

Did it get colostrum?
What is it eating?
A fever?
What color is the poo?

Lambs not on their ewes are often fragile.
Thats why I have been up all night trying to keep my ewes 2 lambs on her teat no matter how much she protest. I will try everything to not bottle a lamb.


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## gracie88 (May 29, 2007)

Yes.
Goat milk (except right now, just electrolytes, and he did get at least one meal of milk replacer before I got him)
no
yellow, watery


> Thats why I have been up all night trying to keep my ewes 2 lambs on her teat no matter how much she protest.


Oh, that's no fun either.

He's perked up a little with the electrolytes, but still puny.


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## Ross (May 9, 2002)

I'd give the lamb 4 ccs of pepto bismol and gatoraide is OK for another meal. Bottle lambs need multiple small feedings; you may have simply over fed the little guy.


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## FairviewFarm (Sep 16, 2003)

I agree with Ross. If the lamb is less than 3 days old, I'd feed it 3-4 ounces 6 times a day. To get it back on milk replacer, you might want to alternate the electrolytes with the milk replacer for a day or two. To reduce risk of E. coli scours I'd also treat the lamb with 1 cc spectinomycin (Spectam, Spec Guard are trade names) twice a day for a couple days.

At 5-7 days you can start to gradaually increase milk replacer amounts while decreasing frequency.


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## gracie88 (May 29, 2007)

Ahh, pepto bismol, "it coats, soothes, relieves" . I hope it's just overfeeding, it also occurred to me that going from Mom to replacer to goat milk might have been a stress on his little ol' system, but goat milk is what I've got. I'll have to check at the feed store for spectinomycin tomorrow morning.


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## Laurie J (Mar 9, 2005)

From our experience, goat's milk is the best thing for a bummer lamb to be on if you can't give it ewe's milk. Much better than formula. It's very easy to overfeed a bottle baby. You can actually give them so much that it kills them, though. They don't know when to quit. I agree...small, frequent bottles.


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## eieiomom (Jun 22, 2005)

gracie88 said:


> Ahh, pepto bismol, "it coats, soothes, relieves" . I hope it's just overfeeding, it also occurred to me that going from Mom .



Just curious, why was she taken away from her mom ?


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## gracie88 (May 29, 2007)

> Just curious, why was she taken away from her mom ?


 The ryegrass farmers here in the W. valley also raise sheep, they kid on the fields in the spring. There are lots of bummer lambs for sale this time of year, and I was going to ask why but it slipped my mind at the time. I suspect that, since they are raised for meat, they want to limit the number of lambs a ewe has, and also, with hundreds of sheep lambing with little assistance, there's bound to be some ewes lost or unable/unwilling to raise their lambs. Understand, this is my totally uneducated guess.


> They don't know when to quit. I agree...small, frequent bottles.


Now, see, goaties don't have this problem. Between this guy and the other (given to me at 3 wks old, much lower maintenance), I'm beginning to think sheep have no sense of self-preservation.

He's doing much better this morning, by the way, still runny, stinky poo, but not watery, so that's something, and his appetite is back (and his voice, holy cow!)


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