Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Vaccines are available if white scours is a recurring problem in your lambs.
The current antibiotic of choice for lamb scours is an oral spectinomycin, but
antibiotics are always changing, so before your fi rst lambs arrive, ask your
veterinarian to recommend a therapy. A couple of teaspoons of Pepto-Bismol
or Kaopectate help fi rm up the stool and form a protective coating in the
intestines of lambs with scours.
Tetanus
Tail docking and castration can put lambs in danger of tetanus (or “lockjaw”).
If the ewes have not received a booster of Covexin-8 or a similar product, you
should administer 300 to 500 units of tetanus antitoxin at the time of docking
or castration. The antitoxin protects the lambs for about 2 weeks, while the
wounds are healing. Since there is no known cure for tetanus, protection is
worth the effort.
Urinary Calculi
This problem is most often seen in growing ram lambs and wethers (that is, a
lamb that has been castrated before sexual maturity) over 1 month old. (It is
occasionally seen in mature males, though younger animals are most vulner-
able.) The salts they normally excrete in their urine can form urinary calculi,
also known as stones or water belly. These calculi may lodge in the kidney,
bladder, or urethra.
A lamb with urinary calculi kicks at its stomach, stands with its back
arched, switches its tail, and strains to urinate (or dribbles urine, frequently
with blood in it). Some lambs recover if a stone is passed soon enough. This
blockage of the urinary tract causes pain, colic, and eventually rupture of
the urinary system into the body cavity (hence the name “water belly”) and
death.
If you are watching a lamb that appears to be straining and unable to uri-
nate, put him on a dry fl oor for a couple of hours. Unless there is a blockage,
he will ordinarily urinate in that time. Turn the lamb up and feel for a small
stone, which can be worked gently down the urinary passage. Sometimes
manipulation of a small catheter tube (from the drugstore) dislodges the
stone.
Veterinarians say that nine times out of ten, the plugging is at the outer
end of the urethra, so if you can feel a stone right at the end, you may be able
to dislodge it with gentle pressure. If the passage is cleared and urine spurts
out, stop the fl ow two or three times. It is possible for the bladder to rupture if
