New Working LGDs

Mark, I'm missing your posts. How are all the new lambs and mamas doing? And Duke and Penny? Did Duke recover well from his heart worm infection?

You just quit posting, but I am still interested.

Dale

Mar 15 7pm est
83 lambs from 43 ewes (out of 66 bred ewes)
First set of quads in our 23 years of breeding sheep
Today was a slow day, so far, only a set of triplets

First off:
59 lambs born in 1 week from 32 of the 66 bred ewes (as of Sunday night).

A typical day involves ~5miles of walking with 500'-600' of elevation gain on our hilly farm. Cleaning out lambing pens and rebedding them. Filling water buckets. Filling hay racks. Trimming hooves, vaccinating, and deworming on new mothers. Ear tagging and recording info on new lambs. Letting out ewe&lambs that look good to free up space for new mothers and lambs.

Just got a txt from my wife. This morning there were 7 new lambs from 4 mothers and the lambs were all mixed up.

Penny has been a doing puppy stuff, nothing unusual. However, for the safety of the very young lambs we’ve been keeping Penny physically separated from the lambs (until they are bigger).

Good point

The reservoir for heartworm is not just dogs. All canids are susceptible. Wolves, foxes, coyotes, raccoons, and some cats can also be hosts. This disease is endemic enough that if every dog was cleared there would still be a threat to our pets.

dturm wrote:
my choice would be to administer preventative medications everywhere in the US.

Doug, DVM

This would be my recommendation as well, especially compared to the treatment protocol if your dog gets heartworms. Also keep in mind an infected dog is now a reservoir of heartworms for local mosquitoes to draw from and inject into other local dogs. Part of the treatment protocol is the use of topical mosquito repellent.

When evaluating the risk of heartworm disease, it's important to use valid information. The following is a map compiled by the Heartworm Society.

The map is from 2019 (them most current available).

I've practiced in an endemic area where a dog would get heartworm if not on preventive medication. The only variable was when based on how long the animal was outside or exposed to mosquitoes.

The current heartworm preventative medications also treat/prevent most intestinal parasites as well. Because of the broad spectrum of benefits and the very low potential of side effects, my choice would be to administer preventative medications everywhere in the US.

Doug, DVM

Sorry to hear about Duke's diagnosis. Glad you were able to develop a plan quickly.
As for not having dogs on HW preventative, where we live it's quite common. I have to specifically ask for a HW test every year at the vet. All of our jokes about it being a dry heat aside, it is very dry and not really much risk of HW. My dogs are on a preventative because we travel with them, and going more than 50-ish miles from home can put us into a climate where the risk is present. If they were homebodies I wouldn't do it.

The treatment protocol covers 1 year; ~6 months of restricted activity (ideally crated and leash walked). For a dog that has never lived in a house it is not possible to keep him calm while crated or even in the house at night (LGDs do most of their work at night). We’ve come up with a compromise plan (after consultation with Dr Doug and our friend who is a Vet). We will keep Duke in the house during the day to facilitate giving meds and monitoring his health during treatment; he will be locked in the barnyard with the sheep at night (limiting his desire and ability to patrol) and Penny (1 yo Anatolian) will be locked out of the barnyard at night to patrol the field (and not able to play with Duke). We have determined a dose of anti anxiety meds that will allow Duke to tolerate being housed at night during the critical times right after treatment with adulticide for the worms.

Since Penny is not old/mature enough to have gone through lambing she will be kept away from the lambs at night and will be pulling a drag (something to slow her down but not prevent her from patrolling) during the day while with the ewes and lambs in the field.

The first possible day for lambs is Friday Mar 3. Last week we found a ewe cast (upside down unable to get up) in the morning that we thought was dead. She had started to bloat from being cast. We managed to save her and since then have had 4 more ewes go down in health which we now believe is due to hypocalcemia (low calcium). The ewes go from looking weak, to unable to stand, to lying flat with labored breathing. SubQ injections of calcium gluconate restore them within 30min to where they can stand. One of the sick ewes did abort a set of twins; I found her in the field with the head of a dead lamb sticking out of her. We had to pull both lambs out of her because she wasn’t having strong enough contractions.

Added: I forgot about the ewe that prolapsed before all the issues with hypocalcemia; she died a few days after we put everything back inside her.

The hypocalcemia is likely the consequence of adding grain to their diet too late/slowly. Last year we started late and increased their rations too quickly leading to many having bloat and a few died from it.

Probably TMI, but you asked.

BCSnob wrote:
Positive test confirmed.
We’ll be starting the treatment asap.
Duke will not be working while undergoing treatment.
We’re making our game plan for dealing with young inexperienced Penny protecting the flock but not causing issues during lambing.

It's been about a month. Any update on Duke? How goes the lambing?

Dale