Sick Sheep Seldom Survive

 Sick Sheep Seldom Survive

A common saying in vet school is “Sick Sheep Seldom Survive”.   We understand that more now having experienced that just last week.  Our 9 month old American Black Belly ram, Simon had to be euthanized by our veterinarian after a brief but severe infection caused him to lose at least 25% of his body weight.  We acquired Simon this past July 23^rd from a farm where we had already purchased a couple of Katahdin ewes.  

Simon meets the Ewes!

Simon had been bottle fed, so he acted much more like a dog than a ram.  He would come when he was called, loved to be scratched behind the ears and on his neck.  When he started losing weight about a two months after we got him, we thought perhaps he had a belly full of parasitic worms so administered the appropriate de-wormer.  Our veterinarian who also happens to be our son examined a fecal sample and to no one’s surprise, found a few different species of worms but nothing unusual in species or population density.  When that treatment failed to have any positive results, a round of two different antibiotics along with a pain reliever seemed to have an effect, but only for a day or two.  Simon wasn’t very interested in food.  As thin as he was, he should have been ravenous.   His teeth had some rather sharp points on them and could have been the reason for not eating so we sedated him and filed his teeth smooth, thinking we had hit upon the solution.  The following day was no different with Simon refusing every possible combination of grains, alfalfa, fresh grass and other treats any other sheep would relish. As it turned out, he was probably in pain and grinding his teeth.  On Wednesday evening, he was euthanized and a post-mortem was performed.  As it turned out, he was suffering from a massive abdominal infection and had lesions on his lungs.  There was nothing that could have been done for him.  It obviously wasn’t contagious; the ewes were all doing very nicely, putting on considerable weight throughout the summer and fall. 

 

Our son told us when we got him, “Don’t get too attached” and yet we did.  Perhaps it was the way Simon behaved and seemed to relish human contact. Perhaps it was his gentle nature, the result of which was our naming him the first day we had him.  And he was very cute or pretty, depending on how you looked at him.  Whatever the case, it was hard to see him suffer and hard to lose him.   

 

There has to be a middle ground, where you care about your livestock yet don’t invest emotionally in them to the degree we did.  First it was losing two ewes to coyotes and then the loss of our ram. This incident will serve as a learning experience for us, we hope.  This article is less about losing an animal than putting that loss into proper perspective.  After all, we want the sheep to eat our grass and at some point, we will eat them.  That’s life and that’s life on the farm.