Culling Decisions

I wanted to write a bit about culling decisions, it’s been on my mind due to a lot of discussions on sheep discussion groups I read. For this discussion, I won’t differentiate between sending an animal to slaughter versus selling it to someone else. The former is typically done when it wouldn’t be ethical to pass on a compromised animal to someone else. Selling, however, can be fine if the animal doesn’t meet our own goals, but may be a good fit in someone else’s system; as long as the perceived detractors are disclosed, and the animal is discounted appropriately. Either way, there are times when we may decide that an animal will not be retained in the herd because she’s not passing muster.

 

In the Numbers

Here are my lamb counts for the year. I had forty ewes overwintered here. One was a late summer-born ewe, so I suspected she may not breed, and she didn’t. That’s ok. Of the remaining 39, six are not pregnant, as confirmed by recent blood tests. Five of those are ewelambs. The sixth is my Jacob cross ewe, who is two; I don’t know why she didn’t conceive. So, she will have to go this year.

 

Frothy Bloat in Grazing Lambs

I’ve had several cases of frothy bloat crop up this year. The interesting thing is that it’s appearing in regular ol’ lambs nursing on their mothers, at the age of 3-4 weeks, when they are just starting to transition to real ruminating. I’m used to seeing it in bottle lambs trained to drink of the “milk bar” bucket. They are prone to bloat because of their gorging habit when the bucket is re-filled  with milk. But I’ve never seen it before in regular, non-grain-fed lambs, and I can’t find any documentation to explain it.

 

Ordinary, Yet Noteworthy Number Seven

I like to write a lot about strange cases, anomalies, and sick animals. Though they are the biggest headache, I also find them the most intriguing. Today I will write about one of the rest: all of the perfectly normal, perfectly boring sheep which are noteworthy for capturing none of my attention at all.

 

Sick Bay

I have a poor ewe that’s really has some bad luck this year. I mentioned already that she had triplets, and one of the lambs just couldn’t figure out how to nurse (though he found the bottle perfectly understandable). He’s thriving as a friendly bottle lamb, the ambassador of the season. The day after she lambed, I realized she had an incredible lump on her jaw, bloody saliva and pain (along with crabbiness!). Presuming it was a tooth abscess, I treated her with antibiotics, and this seemed to resolve. I monitored her in the barn for two weeks, then put her back in the pasture with her nursing twins. A week later, I noticed she was standing hangdog, and was not coming to eat the evening grain feeding. A sheep that doesn’t want grain is a sick sheep indeed.