From the Pastures: Never again

Some days are diamonds and some days are stones. Sometimes you’re the bug; other times you’re the windshield. I have had several questions on how did my shearing go, so I decided to share this diabolical info in hope that it is not repeated by someone in years to come.

It all started innocently enough, looking backward. I held the flock off feed for 24 hours to empty their rumen and just gave them water. Then the shearer had truck problems and couldn’t get to me until the next day. No problem, I thought. We started shearing at 6 a.m. — now two days off of feed — and by 10 a.m., I had one dead ewe and two more ewes that were lying down and wouldn’t get up. So, I called the vet. He said he was very busy today and couldn’t get to me until tomorrow or he’d have to come right now. I said, “Come now!”

By 11 a.m. the vet was here and thought it was ketosis — what I suspected — tested the two downed ewes by drawing blood and putting the blood on his pocket meter that he uses to test cows for ketosis and it said they didn’t have ketosis. He said we are going to treat them for ketosis anyway. I agreed.

I smelled their breath and it did not have that distinctive, sickly sweet smell that comes with ketosis, so I was wondering if it was ketosis, too. The vet sold me what he thought I needed to treat ketosis, which was: Vitamin B, Banamine, CMPK that is for milk fever, corn syrup which I had and glycerin and propylene glycol combination blend, which is called Fresh Start. I treated the sick ones for four days trying to save them.

We sheared all day until 11 p.m. and quit for the day, but still had 14 sheep to shear. We started back up at 7 a.m. and were done by 9 a.m. for the second day of shearing. By the time the sheep quit dying, I had nine dead ewes with 19 fetuses inside them. I did save three ewes and they had nine live lambs in the last two weeks. So, 8% of my flock died at an estimated cost of $5,600 — and I haven’t gotten the vet bill.

Here’s what I should have done. Fed the sheep a little feed after the first 24-hour fast and always have clean water for them to drink. I should have gotten the shearer to shear earlier so the ewes were not so close to lambing, but he was booked up and then his truck broke down. It was a compounding effect that caused this. Eight of the dead ewes had twins inside them and one had triplets. The three surviving ewes had a set of twins, triplets and quads. The dead ones and live ones had an estimated date of lambing from the shearing date of 11 to 27 days so that was equal.

In 40 years of raising sheep, I’ve never had this happen and I hope to never see it again. On the bright side, I do have a whole lot of compost for sale.