On Friday 11th of Aug we administered the Toxoplasmosis and Enzootic abortion vaccines. I know many sheep owners don’t but after the heartache we went through last year it was a definite and without doubt action this year for us. It must be said that the administering of this vaccine is not for the dithering, faint hearted or the clumsy!
It is a vaccine made to order, has a shelf life of days as it is alive, and once the two components of each vaccine are made up you then have a time limit of 2 hours to administer. Cost was in the region of £150 for both vaccines for 20 ewes. Some may think that is expensive, I don’t, and for us think it is worth every penny….here’s why:
To revisit last year briefly and the nightmare we had. On Dec 29th we had our 6 ewes scanned. The result was all were in lamb, 2 with twins, we were elated, all our ewes were happy and healthy.
Then in January I happened to notice one of our ewes, our best one, had brown discharge. At that time I was not too concerned as she was well. I remember walking the paddock to see if she had aborted! Nothing found, I rang the vet. They wanted her in in the morning. The vet examined her, cervix was closed, nothing to suggest she was aborting, that was the Friday but then on the Monday it got worse, more discharge. I took her back in to the vets, to cut a long story short – she aborted into the vets hand, It was sent off for analysing.
I was told all the scenarios of what it could be but I hoped that it was as simple as a pregnancy that was just not viable for whatever reason, and that because I watch them so closely I managed to notice when she aborted when in much bigger flocks such episodes can be missed.
The one thing that had occurred, and I think now that we have our live lambs to be thankful for, is our ram Pendragon. A few days before Gale aborted he was all over her like she was in season. He was mad on her but she wasn’t interested in him. A few days after Gale had aborted I noticed Pendragon was all over another one of my ewes Dotty. Straight away I split her from the flock and isolated her and Gale together. 10 days later Dotty aborted twins.
Gale’s aborted foetus was analysed by the lab and came back with a positive Toxoplasmosis result. We were devastated. This was January and our ewes weren’t due to lamb until beginning to end of March.
I won’t bore you with the science of Toxo, you can read about that here. But what I will say is that we on were told more than once that we had just been unlucky. Many sheep catch this disease annually and there are thousands of pounds lost in the farming industry each year due to it. However having been through Toxoplasmosis, a couple of our sheep caught it, it has been and gone from our flock, but I think we were actually very lucky, strange thing to say but I will explain why at the end.
Toxo is primarily spread through cat faeces. I add at this point that we nor the farm my sheep are on have cats, although there are cats in the village. I hand picked the hay and straw I bought in for them so it was of the cleanest top quality standard, and we are pretty much a closed farm too. The vet is convinced that it was brought in on food as this is the most common route. The unfortunate thing is that you most likely will not see the cat faeces carrying the disease. it can be picked up in water supplies, on pasture, on hay, straw etc. I read that one pile of infected cat feaces can infect a lot of sheep due to the thousands oocytes shed.
So having had 2 abort, we were told to expect them all to abort. We were told of a farmer in Devon who had 60 ewes and all apart from one had aborted with Toxo!
The cruel thing about Toxo is that it is not an instantly decisive disease. A ewe that is infected can abort during pregnancy, or go to full term and deliver dead lamb/s or deliver a live lamb which will only live for up to 2 weeks after giving birth.
These 12 weeks were the worst ever. Constantly changing clothes, foot dipping, full isolation procedures for infected ones until after last ewe had lambed, constant vigilance of the pregnant ones….it was a nightmare.
Everyone on the RFBS website was sharing photos of their lovely live lambs which we were thrilled to see but felt so knotted inside as this was everything we had hoped to be sharing in too….it was like living on a knife edge.
When our first ewe started to lamb I was dreading the outcome. We did have to have the vet out as she was in difficulty but thankfully a healthy live lamb was born….we just hoped he would live. He did and I am so pleased to say he is our Smeafield Xowie who went on to win his very first show. (Xowie is Greek for ‘Life’).
Our second ewe to lamb was Barbara. She lambed a lovely ewe lamb, she was absolutely gorgeous but I knew from the start that something wasn’t right. Over the period of 3 weeks she grew slowly but became increasingly sick. The vets and us did everything we could to get her to live, I was devastated that she became so poorly that we had to put her to sleep. I spent the entire last night of her life in the barn with her and her mum, she chose to cuddle up next to me when she was so poorly in her final hours. That was the toughest day I have had in many years and I am not too tough to say I shed a lot of tears over our Precious, she was number 2 born and no one will ever have ear tag number two of our flock – it is dedicated to her eternally.
From then on, we had another healthy ram lamb born, then we had our twins due. Fudge went into labour and produced a healthy ram lamb, followed by a ewe lamb – our only living ewe lamb.
So back to my earlier comment where I feel we have been very lucky….to have had Toxo brought in to my flock who are cared for like family, and yet to still have live and healthy lambs born I feel so incredibly lucky.
So this year there was never any doubt in my mind we were definitely vaccinating against abortion. I know many don’t and for those of you that read this I am not saying you should vaccinate, but I know how much meticulous care we take over our sheep and then subsequently what we went through emotionally and financially and I would never want to go there again. I have even vaccinated those that had aborted even though they now have lifelong immunity having had Toxo.
This has been a tough post to write, to revisit it all, and to be on the receiving end of the cruel hand that Mother Nature can throw you regardless of how well you care for your flock. I am grateful of that learning curve in many ways although I will always be so devastated with the loss of our gorgeous Precious. Toxo is something anyone can get in their flock until they are immune or vaccinated.
We are now really looking forward to lambing 2018.