New Working LGDs

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.