# Ewe's sudden death



## bsheep (Jul 28, 2011)

Walked out to the feedlot to prepare feed for the ewes and found one of my favorites dead right beside the spot where she normally sleeps. She was active, eating well, and was nursing two lambs that are now 57 days old. I took pictures of her where I found her, she's not showing a swollen jaw. The ground showed she kicked a little bit before dying.

There's lots of mesquite fronds that blew down during the storm, but that has been part of the sheep's diet for some time. She was just starting to go into rigor when I found her. She didn't get her CD&T booster in the past 6 months, but probably had one in the past 18 months. No truck to get her for an autopsy at the vet clinic, and too costly to call them here, farm visit alone is $89.

Here she is with a lamb from early 2012, then she had triplets this November.


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## Callieslamb (Feb 27, 2007)

So sorry. I hope someone can help you decide what it was.


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## thequeensblessing (Mar 30, 2003)

How was her udder? Mastitis can come on suddenly and can be deadly if left untreated. Also, internal parasites can kill a sheep before bottle jaw ever develops. 
But there are so many things that can kill a sheep suddenly like that, just as with any other animal. Sometimes you're going to have those little mysteries that just don't ever get cleared up. Frustrating I know. Perhaps if there's a place near you that can do a necropsy for little to no money? Otherwise, if your other sheep look healthy, if their eyelids are bright pink or red, if there's no diarrhea, coughing, or mastitis, I don't think I'd be overly concerned. I don't recall you saying how old she was.


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## bsheep (Jul 28, 2011)

She was just under 4 years old. No external signs of sickness, or coughing. She carried triplets, raised two of them. I have very dry fields, not conductive to worms I think?


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## sheepish (Dec 9, 2006)

This year we had 3 of our 80 sheep die suddenly. They were all autopsied.

A 2 year old ram who was being used for breeding had a tumour at the base of the neck that caused his neck to break. He looked and acted healthy up until then.

A 5 year old ewe had a runny nose and was being treated died of a tumour in the nasal cavity.

A 4 year old otherwise healthy, pregnant ewe died suddenly of an abomasal impaction. No cause could be found for the impaction to happen.

For the first 20 or so years of raising sheep, we didn't see any unattributed deaths, in fact hardly any deaths. Now we have seen a few and this year three. I think that if you have enough sheep (we have almost 3,000 in our database) you will see unexplained deaths. The key is knowing if there is an explanation for a death that puts the living animals in your flock at risk.


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## thequeensblessing (Mar 30, 2003)

You know...we had a gorgeous dorper ram named Squat last year who just died. We found him in the pasture where he looked like he had just keeled over dead mid-stride. We too had a post mortem done and it seemed to show cause of death as blunt force. At the time, we thought it was our other ram, Country Boy, although they were separated by a fence, we figured they'd still managed to tussle. Now, we're not too sure. We watched one of our Jersey cows literally toss a ewe away from the hay feeders and break her neck. Sooo....we had to separate the cows from the sheep, and sold that cow.


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## mariaricarto (Jul 1, 2010)

Sorry about your sheep. She was a pretty and productive one. What breed(s) was she?

Is mesquite toxic in larger amounts? Could the larger amount of mesquite cause bloat? Maybe tetnus?


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## mariaricarto (Jul 1, 2010)

Our ewes could be related. Here is a photo of mine. I'm on the Big Island.


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## bsheep (Jul 28, 2011)

The mesquite isn't poisonous, but I was wondering about bloat though since it was a high volume of it. But everyone else is fine. My ewe's sire is from the Dorper breeder near Kohala.

This flock is about 30 breeding ewes of mainly Dorper and St. Croix heritage, and they keep the guinea grass mowed down, which right now is a major fire hazard. We've experienced 4 fires in 12 months in surrounding fields. One was in the pasture that had been grazed short, and this really slowed down the fire's progress.

Yes she was a pretty one, and I really liked her. There's 3 daughters still here, so once I find another high percentage or purebred dorper ram, I'll keep increasing the Dorper percentage.


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## bsheep (Jul 28, 2011)

This time it was a lamb. I saw it at feeding time, and in hindsight really should have started it on penicillin on the spot. Instead I thought it might be worms and was worming the flock that day anyway so it got 1/2 cc dose, which is actually the dose for cattle weight, one cc for every 110 #

That night it was in severe respiratory distress, which I finally recognized it was struggling with earlier in the day, not quite as pronounced. It did not cough, just wheezed like an asthmatic, trying to catch it's breath. So I treated it with 2 cc of a B vitamin complex and 1 cc of penicillin. It died early the next morning as it was slightly warm to the touch.

Can an animal be frozen then taken to the vet, a lamb is small enough that I could have done this. It died on Sunday, so if I could have put it into the freezer, then taken it to the vet later, I probably would have tried that.

I'm kicking myself for treating it with worm medicine when it obviously had a fever, at least to the touch. 

Comments? I know it is mostly guesses, but these sheep get lots of exercise, dry brown graze, alfalfa cubes mixed with water to make a mash, a custom sheep mineral, the grass is just barely starting up again. I do have them confined at night for security reasons but they are in the "dust bowl" paddock .


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## mariaricarto (Jul 1, 2010)

Do you think the ewe and the lamb's deaths are from the same thing? Did the ewe have respiratory symptoms? Maybe they are unrelated? It sounds like the lamb had pneumonia.

Call our extension agent in Hilo, Becky is a sheep expert.


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