# Is this a mucus plug?



## Ruus (Apr 8, 2014)

One of my ewes started giving off classic signs of first-stage labor around noon yesterday, which really surprised me, since I'd concluded she wasn't pregnant. She has no bulge, and no udder at all that I can see. She was avoiding the other ewes, pawing the ground, squatting frequently, etc and she had a mucus-y looking discharge from her rear that I figured was the mucus plug.

She hadn't lambed by nightfall but she was still acting like she was in early labor, so I thought I'd have a lamb this morning. There's no lamb, but the discharge is so long it nearly touches the ground! It looks like a long cord with knobs in it. Are mucus plugs that big or is this something else? 

I'm getting kind of worried since it's been so long, but as far as I can tell her water hasn't broken and she's not straining to expel a lamb, so maybe I'm worrying over nothing?


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## Roving Jacobs (Apr 8, 2014)

That looks like afterbirth to me, are you sure there isn't a dead lamb somewhere in your pasture


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## Ruus (Apr 8, 2014)

Roving Jacobs said:


> That looks like afterbirth to me, are you sure there isn't a dead lamb somewhere in your pasture


Her lamb was dead, but she hadn't passed it at this point. As near as I can tell it was the umbilical cord or something; it was attached to the dead fetus.


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