[Jacob-list] Ewe with Mastitis

[Heather Hettick]

Todd,

I have had 3 ewes total with mastitis.  I lost one who had the blue bag type
and that was scary and gross but I didn't catch it soon enough and she died.
Luckily her lambs were big enough do relatively okay on their own.  She got
it when her lambs were larger and out on pasture so I didn't notice it right
away and it was the first case I ever had.

The other two never got to that point or were a different type of infection
and had problems right away after lambing, but although they survived, they
seemed to have mastitis recur the next year and they both got culled
eventually. One thing that seemed to help a lot at least from a management
standpoint was to milk them out or massage their udders as much as possible.
It helps to get the bad stuff out and get things moving and also helps you
keep tabs on how the ewe is doing.  My two ewes problem were not
particularly friendly so they resisted this a lot and maybe if I had been
able to work with them more, they would have done better and recovered more
fully. The lambs helped once the ewe was in less pain, but I did what I
could when things were painful.

I wish you LUCK!

Heather