This is no Nancy Drew story. But where else other than a farm can you start a blog post with a title like that? Prepare for an explicit story of biology gone awry, though, this time, no gross pictures!
This is a triplet lamb that I’d had in the barn with her family, so I could supplement the lambs a little bit. At age seven weeks, I was planning on kicking the whole crew outside, since everything was stable, and the lambs were getting old enough to wean off of any milk supplements. It was then I happened to notice the distinctive sound of a lamb complaining while she was pooping. Sheep don’t tend to vocalize much when they are in discomfort, that’s a feature of a prey animal. The one scenario where they do tend to cry out is when they are straining, either from constipation, or when they are giving birth.
I gave her a little Milk of Magnesia to help her loosen up, and didn’t give it much more thought. After a day or two, she was still doing it- a lot of straining, and complaining every time she pooped. I took a closer look, thinking maybe I should try giving her an enema or something. What I found was (or didn’t find, as the case may be): she. had. no. anus. (!) About that time, my unconscious brain had this conversation with my conscious brain:
U: See, I told you! I saw poop coming out of her vagina! You blew me off.
C: But poop doesn’t come out of the vagina!
U: Well, in this case, apparently it does! Look, there’s a pellet right there, clearly coming out of the vagina!
C: Well, I’ll be. I guess you were right.
Indeed, I had sorta unconsciously noticed a couple of times that it looked like poop was coming out of her vagina, but I just didn’t gel on it, because, ya know, that’s not possible. Except that it is. It’s called atresia ani vaginalis, and it crops up in about 1% of lambs, according to a quick web search. In male lambs born with a missing anus, trouble starts early and they are likely to die. In female lambs, sometimes their bodies work out this physical compromise, creating a breach between the adjacent poop and pee tubes, technically speaking, so that the poop can find an exit.
So this was how it came to be that I didn’t notice until this lamb was two months old that she had this problem. Probably when she started eating roughage in earnest is when the complaining started. It was causing her some discomfort, but I would rate it as relatively minor: about as much annoyance as any of us may feel when we are mildly constipated.
When I first realized what was wrong, I wondered if this was some consequence of recessive genes coming through a line breeding. But after checking my records, I realized, nope. This was a complete outcross breeding. The other two triplet siblings are healthy and normal. Their dam is five and has always had normal lambs. The sire is two, has had a lot of lambs here as well. Just one of those weird anomalies that crops up, I guess. Plants or environmental factors can sometimes influence fetal development in this kind of fashion; but it’s interesting that only this one lamb had it, out of all the lambs born here.
I discussed the options with the vet. They were:
1. Leave it be. But the vet felt the lamb would likely struggle with chronic UTIs, sending her in a cycle of perpetual antibiotics, keeping her out of the human food chain as a butcher animal. And, eliminating her ability to live on indefinitely as a pet. Plus, there is the discomfort factor. So, cross leaving it alone off the list.
2. Euthanize her immediately. Which I’m sure some mercenary famers would do out of prioritization of profit over all other factors. And I wouldn’t necessarily blame them. But, this lamb was otherwise healthy and vigorous. I have a hard time euthanizing something that isn’t a complete medical disaster or suffering terribly, where it’s clearly death is the only and best choice. It’s that tricky ethical part of raising animals for food, that the fate of the little fighters is in your hands.
3. Fix it surgically. Then either let her be a butcher lamb, or sell her to a pet home where she will never be bred (in case there is a genetic component to it, either inherited or mutation, which could be passed on).
I chose option 3. The vet I work with understands the issues. She didn’t charge me as much as she’d likely charge a dog/cat client: $400, including the initial exam to assess the problem. A lot of the cost was anesthesia. Five people ended up assisting in the surgery, as it was challenging to work on such tiny structures. So she’s not making any money on this deal. And neither am I. At best, she’ll be a $200 butcher lamb, worst, I’ll sell her as a cute pet for $150.
Now that I have a lot more sheep, it’s easier to consider vet work to be a general overhead cost, and worry less about the ROI of a particular animal. When you have six sheep, a $400 vet bill kills your whole profit margin for the year. When you have sixty, it’s a little more tolerable. There are some benefits: I bring the vet interesting cases, she (and I) get to learn on a low-emotional-risk patient. It maintains my veterinary-client relationship, so that I have access to prescription drugs when I need them. Bringing the vet some revenue-generating work offsets the times I call her on the phone for advice, and she gets paid nothing. Since I am able to do a lot of basic vet work myself, the only cases I have to offer her are these weird ones; and ones that require anesthesia or more advanced equipment.
The lamb is doing well. The creation of the anus worked fine, the vet reported the “tube” ran all the way to the end in a cul-de-sac, and there was even a sphincter muscle there; just a lack of an opening. So, she cut an opening, and sutured the muscle all around in a purse string to keep it together. What didn’t work was suturing closed the old breach. It re-opened right away the evening of the surgery, so now poop is coming out of both openings. I imagine the brain and muscle memory wanted to insist on using that old opening, and will need time to learn how the new one works. We’ll wait and see, maybe the body will close it once everything heals, preferring to use the path of least resistance. Or maybe we’ll have to try to sew up that breach later. In retrospect, I think what would have worked better was to have induced pretty runny diarrhea in her before the surgery, and maintain it afterwards, so that there wasn’t much solid material to pressure that old opening to breach again.
Incidentally, the vet consulted with her consortium of mentors on this. Only one guy in his seventies had seen this issue twice in his career. He managed to fix it once, and the other one, not.
For now, I’m continuing to give the lamb Milk of Magnesia to keep her stools at least soft, so it’s easier to push them through the sutured opening. The drug protocol is Banamine for a week, Penicillin for two, and stitches out at two weeks as well. She is such a cute, spunky, social, and vigorous little lamb, hopefully we can get this fix working and I can find her a pet home.
June 15, 2015 at 5:30 am
So nice to read about a farmer who goes the extra mile for the the lambs even when it costs more than they are worth financially. Some times the babies are just more important than counting the the time and money needed to put things right! I sure hope you fine a good home for her. I know I find it hard to slaughter the ones that I have become attatched to because of the extra time spent with them.
Sandra
June 15, 2015 at 9:30 am
Agree with Sandra. And justifications for going option 3 were logical and humane, thanks again for sharing your stories Michelle!
June 15, 2015 at 5:32 pm
Wow…wow!!
June 15, 2015 at 8:18 pm
I had just read on the internet how a certain percentage of humans are born without a functioning anus, and one must be made for them. Sorry to have forgotten the percentage.
June 15, 2015 at 9:20 pm
I am a shepherd of Babydoll Southdown sheep. In May of 2012, I had purchased a lamb born in March 2012 from another Babydoll breeder. A year later I sold her. When I sell my lambs, I have the vet come out and do their health checks so I can get the certificates of veterinary inspections they need when leaving my farm. The following year, I was contacted by the person I sold the lamb too. She had had her vet out to check her sheep before lambing commenced. Her vet discovered the sheep had an atresia anal rectal vaginal fistula. Since the ewe was due to lamb at any time, it was a wait and see thing. The ewe had a healthy ram lamb without a Cesarian being performed.
What was amazing was this ewe had belonged to three people and had been seen by a vet at least once before the anomaly was ever discovered. More amazing was she was still alive, had bred, and delivered a lamb naturally with the anomaly.
Of course, it was determined she should not lamb again and was not supposed to be allowed to breed. Well, we all know how that goes. While pregnant for the second time, the ewe’s third owner sold her to another person. This person was told about the problem and had a vet on call to be on hand for the second lambing. Unfortunately and sadly, her twin lambs died before they were born and the ewe died shortly after.
June 16, 2015 at 12:41 am
Michelle how interesting- did they think that the problems with the fetuses and the death of the ewe were related to the condition, or unknown? I could imagine that the extra bacteria in the vaginal tract could threaten fetuses. On the other hand, I’ve wondered whether I could have gotten by with leaving this long enough to get her to butcher weight… I always think, the vaginal opening is already sort of a bacteria portal, and especially on tail-docked sheep, it seems like poop kind of gets stuck around that opening sometimes anyway.I’m not sure how much worst this condition makes that, especially if the breach is very close to the outlet. If I thought she wasn’t uncomfortable, I think I would have gone the route of just leaving it alone. But it’s so tough to guess how things might turn out! Nature is crazy business!
June 16, 2015 at 12:56 am
I’m really not sure. I know the last owner and their vet decided it best to induce labor due to the circumstances. The ewe was 1-2 weeks away from her due date, I believe. But I’m not sure of the particulars of the deaths of the fetuses nor the ewe.
July 27, 2015 at 1:50 am
[…] lamb with atresia ani died, sadly. After her surgery, she continued to strain to poop, and I was giving her enemas twice […]
July 17, 2016 at 2:52 pm
We have discovered the same problem in one of our ewe lambs. She has been vigorous all of her 3 months. Today I noticed that she was uncomfortable. Brought my husband out to the barn so we could examine her and by then she had pooped and seemed comfortable. When he examined her rear end, he could see that there was no anus and she was pooping through her vigina. When she was born she had what we thought was a second tail which had no bone, just a tag of wool and skin. We thought this was the cause of her back end not looking quite right. We banded it and it feel off. Not sure if this is typical of this physical defect or not. She has a twin, who is normal. We have decided to try to get her to butcher weight as we only have 6 ewes, 11 lambs and cost for surgery doesn’t make sense when it might not work or make things worse.
July 17, 2016 at 5:38 pm
Julie, I think it’s a good call. With mine, it was really a dilemma and I’m still not sure what the “right” choice would have been. I cycled between concern that she would experience a lot of discomfort if it was left alone, or would start to get UTIs, and would either suffer from those, or would need a lot of antibiotics. Or would just outright die from it. She also wasn’t a great grower, so would have taken a long time to grow out. But, the surgery is definitely iffy odds of success and expensive; and would be a loss even if the animal could later be sold as a pet or slaughter animal.
If I did it again, I think I’d just try to grow the lamb out, as you are doing. Things that might help are to try to keep her on a diet that keeps the stool looser, like fresh green grass, and high magnesium in the mineral mix (you could add dolomite to your mix or feed, or drench her directly with Milk of Magnesia when needed). Then just be prepared to give antibiotics if she seems off, implying she may have developed a UTI.
It’s interesting that she had that extra tail bit- I bet that was related, that there was something not forming right during fetal development? Makes me think of spina bifida or some other thing where the end of the spine and tail area don’t come together correctly. I also wonder if these lambs have other internal problems that go along with it, making their long-term prognosis poor? A friend of mine mentioned he had it in a calf, and his vet said “it’ll probably die…” My friend was able to manually open the anus himself with a small knife, since calves are bigger and easier to work on, and the defect was very close to the end. But sure ’nuff, the calf died anyway. Sometimes they are just born with a bad roll of the dice! 😦
March 28, 2017 at 6:26 pm
We bought a yearling in February from a high school kid, said he wasn’t sure what was wrong with her but she would constantly roll around on the ground making groaning noises – and he didn’t think she was bred as all his other sheep had lambed. We brought her home and put in with our other sheep, and she continued to roll on the ground groaning..The little thing that we named Frankie is all of 65 pounds if that….We came home late Sunday night and when my husband went out to do chores Frankie didnt come running like normal. He found her in distress in one of the barns. He nudged her with his foot and when she stood up he noticed a hoof hanging out. She didnt even have a bag so we had no idea she was pregnant. Frankie was foaming at the mouth and her eyes were glassed over. My husband said she needed help. We got her to lie down and he tugged on the hoof, only for the knee down to break off in his hand – talking about terror….And talking about stink. We knew the lamb was dead and Frankie was septic. My husband tried to get a hold of the other hoof, but unfortuantely Frankie wasn’t dilated very much so we were unsure how we were going to assist her. Only option – to call a Vet on a Sunday evening – he came over but didnt seem happy as he said a sheep isnt an animal that you call a vet for on a sunday night as they are not worth much – well I am not going to have an animal suffer under my watch. He went to cut her open more to pull the lamb out when he noticed she too doesnt have a anus opening – no wonder the poor thing groaned all the time. He was shocked that she lived as long as she had and that she even got bred. He pulled the dead lamb. I asked if he thought Frankie would make it – he said the prognosis wasnt good to prop her up against a wall so she didnt bloat over night….Well 2 days later she is up and eating again and on a high dose of penicillin to help her heal as the doctor said he didnt want to stitch her up that the infection needs to be able to drain and it needs to heal from the outside in – only concern is when the weather starts getting hot, flies will start laying eggs which he said would kill her. Thinking our only option is to sell her at the next sheep sale – breaks my heart ……I think if the problem would have been discovered when she was first new we might have been able to fix her. The vet said being bred again could also kill her! The options are heart wrenching!!!
March 28, 2017 at 7:39 pm
Kendy- gosh… If she is more of a pet, and she’s survived this long, maybe it’s worth seeing if she can be fixed? The lamb I had, the “breach” between the anus and vagina was very shallow-just about 1/2″ from the surface. Everything further inside the body appeared normal as far as we could tell. So, the surgery to open up the anus and sew close the breach hole between the two “tubes” was straightforward, other than this being a very tiny lamb. I would think on an adult, it might be easier to work on? I think opening up a straight path to an anus hole would relieve the discomfort she’s feeling from having to push poop pellets through an “S curve” out the vaginal opening. If that were fixed, I don’t see why she couldn’t lamb normally after that (tho since this condition can be congenital, I wouldn’t necessarily keep her offspring as breeders; just use her to produce butcher lambs). I think it all depends on how far inside the body cavity the breach is. But, if she’s less of a pet and it’s not worth a few hundred dollar gamble to try to fix, then yeah, sadly, taking her to the auction (with disclosure, so someone else doesn’t try to keep or breed her) or putting her in your own freezer is probably the only choice!
August 10, 2020 at 2:16 pm
Hi ive got a 3 month old girl lamb with the exact same problem and id like to get her fixed iam from gundagai Australia what should i do ive asked a local vet in gundagai should i go to the next bigger town and ask ? Cheers thanks
August 10, 2020 at 3:44 pm
Michael, yes, I would imagine you could find a vet somewhere willing to try!