Finally……. the orphan lamb is strong, running around and loudly asking for milk. It was quite a long struggle with this one. I only have one orphan lamb this year as I let my neighbours know that I wouldn’t be available as I was working. In previous years I have ended up with 4 or 5 from neighbouring farms.
This ewe lamb came from elderly neighbours who are dealing with health problems and cannot deal with feeding lambs anymore, especially ones that take a bit more work. I took it and managed to get away with taking it to work with me until it was strong. Only possible because I work at a vet clinic.
It had been with it’s mother for 10 days but wasn’t getting enough milk and became weak. The mother was old and not producing enough milk. I find it’s sometimes harder to get the ones that have been drinking from their mum for a while to take to drinking from a bottle, well actually, only when they are female. The males are less stubborn it seems in that regard. In my experience so far anyway.
I tried to get her to drink from a bottle a number of times for hours but ended up resorting to tube feeding. She may have had a muscle weakness actually, possibly from a vitamin deficiency, as she didn’t seem to have a very strong sucking response. She seemed to be more mouthing than sucking. I syringed her some liquid seaweed and some cod liver oil as these can help with vitamin deficiencies. I learnt these from Pat Colby’s books. She wrote a number of books on Natural Farming which are a great help.
Tube feeding can be stressful for both the lamb and the person doing it, but I knew I needed to. I have experienced leaving doing that till it was too late before and lost the lamb because it couldn’t digest the milk. Persevering with trying to get them feeding from the bottle with different teats and techniques etc. Although now I also know that often the problem is the powdered lamb milk replacer. I have lost lambs in the past and believe it was sometimes the actual milk replacer powder that has caused the problem. I have recently been discovering how many people have had problems with the mass produced powdered milk for lambs, and it’s not just one or two brands.
There’s a lot of people who are now using long life milk from the supermarket with some added milk powder instead and have no problems. So this is what I am using now. I did have one other lamb this season before this last one, it was from the same neighbours, the mother had triplets and one was too weak to get up and get a drink. I gave him colostrum and he was strong and lively pretty quick after getting some energy, but he died within 12 hours of starting on the powdered lamb milk replacer. He just could not seem to digest it at all. He started to go down hill after the first feed of it. I had read from Pat Colby that a lot of manufacturers put tallow in the milk to increase the fat as lambs need more fat and protein than calves. She said that the tallow can end up lining their digestive system and prevent them absorbing it and once that has happened there’s nothing you can do to reverse it.
I emailed the manufacturer of the lamb milk replacer powder to ask if they put tallow in their product, they replied no, that they did not add tallow. The other possibility I found, doing a lot of research online, was that a lot of people have had better success giving the milk cold instead of warmed. That this may have something to do with the powder not being human grade and going
through less stringent checks which means it could sometimes be high in bacteria. When heated, possibly the bacteria multiply quickly and make the lamb sick.
People often yoghurtise the milk also and this often helps prevent bloat which often happens when they are a bit older, bigger and stronger. It’s caused by a build up of the lactose over time. I do this once the lambs get past that initial stage. But it was not bloat that my little lamb died from this season.
It can be a delicate balance with these young delicate lambs. But I’m definitely happier with the long life milk with added milk powder. 120 ml of milk and 9g of milk powder, human grade.
But back to the current lamb success story…..she fought hard not to be tube fed…..as I said stressful for both of us……but she got stronger and her tongue muscles got stronger and she eventually was able to suck properly from the bottle. It did take a week before she was drinking enough and I didn’t have to tube feed her at all anymore.
I felt a bit sorry for her being a single lamb on her own. She did try constantly to get close and cuddle up to the other lamb (being a dog – chihuahua x jack russell) in her bed, who wanted nothing to do with her.
Along the way between then and now she was also scouring for weeks and also ended up with scabby mouth which is a herpes like virus. But she’s pulled through and is now strong and vocal. Patches of wool are missing where the scabs were but that should grow back. In fact what helped a lot with the scabs was urine therapy. A lot of cultures use it for various things and it’s really good for skin issues. I used her urine on cotton wool – dabbing it on the scabs and where I used it they cleared up quicker. This is the first time I’ve tried this but will keep it in mind as a possible remedy for other skin issues in the future.