Fallen Pasterns and Broken Legs

[purplequeenvt]

The pasterns will most likely come up as she gets stronger.

I'd check with your vet about giving her some selenium (BoSe). That might help her too.

 

[norseofcourse]

Congrats on the lambs, and sorry about the little ewe lamb's troubles - sounds like you are taking good care of her. I haven't dealt with many problems yet, so I'd defer to those with more experience. I do know my lambs from first-timers don't usually seem to grow as fast as lambs from moms with a few years under their belt, and boys generally grow faster than girls. And some of her energy is going toward healing up, too. I hope she does well and that leg mends fast.

 

[n8ivetxn]

Hi there, this is the first time I've had a chance to log in - worn out from taking care of my own neonatal!

I'm just guessing, but she might be having pastern/leg issues due to her small size and undeveloped muscles (the cast is throwing her out of balance). Young animals are very resilient and she'll likely recover after the cast is off.

Trembling is often a sign of pain in animals. The leg might be hurting....

Get well soon, little lamb! (Oh, I don't tell, but mine has been in the house a few times ;-)

 

[misfitmorgan]

Thank you everyone for reassuring me we were doing the right thing. The little lamby now named maggie is doing fine, her pasterns on the good leg has straightened back out very close to where it should be i think it will be fine after she gets her cast off. Another week or two and the vet should give the all clear to take it off. She went to the vet last friday a few days early because her eyes had gone all cloudy very quickly less then 24hrs and i was worried because she was losing her sight so she went back to see the vet and they said it was an infection in her eyes. So she has been getting antibiotics ointment in her eyes since friday and the cloudiness is going away. Even mostly blind with a broken leg she never slowed down. She is fast and can beat me from my living room to the end of the hall way hands down.

She is a great lamb and a fighter. She is gaining weight and growing very well, the vet split her cast and redressed her leg friday night. She has a striped cast now instead of hearts. There are some good pictures of her in my blog in my signature line if anyone wants to see how she is doing. I'm on a different computer or i would add them to this post.

She is eating hay and grain and of course still on milk. She weighs probly about 15lbs now her brother weighs 30lbs roughly. So he is definitely growing a lot faster. We normally band tails but we were waiting on the little girl because she already has so much stress on her body with the broken leg and then the eye infection. So she will get that done when her cast comes off we think, her brother already dropped his tail.

 

[Bossroo]

This ewe lamb sounds like there was selenium deficiancy from the time you purchased the pregnant ewes and/ or born a bit premature. Sounds that she will recover but may not grow to her full potentail.

 

[misfitmorgan]

I don't think it is selenium, both lambs were given bose gel at birth. Plus we had the ewes for over 3 months with free choice minerals and selenium. Add far add we can tell she was born on time or within days her due date. Her pasturns turned out fine and she is gaining weight nicely, she is about 3 times the size she was and filled it nicely now. I think it was just being female and a first time ewe.

 

[misfitmorgan]

it did not end well with my poor house lamb. Her leg fully healed and she was walking fine, she got the eye infection and healed up from that and regained 85% or so of her vision. Wednesday night she died from we assume Endotoxemia, we had followed the advice of our vet on vaccinating with CDT. The problem is the vet gave us the wrong info and told us we only need to vaccinate kids/lambs for CDT and just to do it in the first 3 months. She also told us the wrong dose with Bar Vac she told us 1ml per....its suppose to be 2ml per. So we thought we were doing that right but no we were not. The entire herd needs to be vaccinated for CDT and given booster shots yearly. We are very sad we lost our lamb but we learned an important part of livestock, read the labels on the vaccines. We stupdily blinded trusted the vet and that was the wrong thing to do.