Urinary calculi

[CrazyParrot]

One of our lambs now has urinary calculi. I know I have bored you all to death already with the lambs many health problems, but do you mind if I ask your advice again?

we took him to the vet (who also looked at the bald ears, but decided that that wasnt the most important thing to worry about right now) who had a look at him and did a bladder scan. He had been dribbling urine for a couple of days, although seemed happy enough, so we brought him in. what a sight it must have been driving through town with a sheep in the back of our golf!

He found a large crystal which he removed, and gave us some muscle relaxant and an anti-inflamatory injection. we are just praying he will recover.

Has anyone had sheep/goats that have recovered succesfully from urinary calculi? What treatment did they get?

anyway, we are not meant to give him any more creep. just grass. Do you think a thin lamb can survive on just grass? Has anyone raised lambs on just milk and grass? Do you think I should cut it? someone said that short grass is more nutritious than long grass.

[ohareward]

Most sheep and lambs are fed on grass here in NZ. Some sheep in the high country live off stuff you would wonder how they survive. If a lamb loses its mother and it can't be put with another ewe that has lost a lamb, then it will be bottle fed until it is old enough to eat grass. How old is the lamb? And what is creep? Jack might know more about it.

I have just found this site.

www.sheepandgoat.com/articles/urincali.html

Robin

[CrazyParrot]

That site looks quite helpful, thanks! The lamb is 12 weeks old, and should really be weaned now but he still gets one bottle a day until we use up this bag of milk replacer.

The creep (basically a mixture of grains mollasses and pellet things) does have the proper Ca:P ratio as it says on that site, but they do pick out the bits they like and leave much of it so maybe that is what the problem is.

Its nice to know that sheep without mothers live off just grass in some places - I live in scotland which people say can have similar weather to NZ (rain) so thats encouraging. They also seem to be eating more grass than they did when they got the creep, although are very annoyed - they keep shouting at me every time I go near. grass tastes quite bland compared to what they ate before!

[ina]

The full name for "creep" is creep feed... Might be a bit misleading otherwise! It's the name given to feed for young lambs that are still out with their mums, and that is fed from a feeder into which the lambs can creep (hence the name), but for which the mums are too big. It can be just pellets, too (smaller than normal sheep cake) - or the mixture that CP has described.

Grass shouldn't be longer than 6 cm ideally; sheep take up most grass at 5 - 6 cm sward height (cows at 8 - 10cm while we are at it...). So yes, they can go hungry in a long sward, even if there's masses of grass! Especially young lambs won't be able to feed properly off the long stuff; it's more fibrous, too, and not as nutritious. If you are still feeding milk I wouldn't worry about the creep feed; just make sure it can get plenty of grass. You might have to top it, at least part of the field, if it's too high.