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udder anomaly


Eileen Stein
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I have a ewe who was the smallest of triplets born here ten years ago. She was bred as a yearling and had a single stillborn lamb. I milked her out a couple of times during the week that followed, and there was no sign of mastitis, but her udder never went back to normal. It got smaller but kept a discrete shape, so that it ended up looking like the scrotum of a very large dog. It was always pliable and un-lumpy whenever I checked it, but I couldn't think of anything that would account for it except mastitis, so because of that (and I guess because she was on the small side and had had a stillbirth) I never bred her again and kept her as a dog sheep.

 

Fast forward to last winter, when the ram broke out and got in with the non-gestating flock. This ewe was one of the ones he consorted with, and she delivered a healthy single last May. Despite my fears about mastitis, she bagged up to have a big, normal-looking udder with a very generous supply of good milk -- she could easily have fed triplets. (Her mother had alternated between twins and triplets, and always raised however many she delivered.) After weaning, her bag got smaller but not down to the size it had been before -- it's now maybe twice the size of a large dog's scrotum -- but again it's pliable with no hard places. It's just . . . there.

 

The ewe is fine, but I just got to wondering whether anyone else had ever come across something like this?

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I have a 13 yr Clun Forset ewe. Last yr I noticed her bag was funky looking....sorta droopy and saggy. It was about the size of a cantalope. Felt her and she was fine.

 

I had the vet out to check on a horse and while he was here I asked him about Granny. He examined her and then told me "Hum, gravity has set in and she is no spring chicken."

 

I must have looked at him funny and then he said.

 

Imagine a large busted women in her prime who then had children every yr and at fifty, how would her chest look...and then he points to Granny.

 

"She won't bounce back and each yr she will sag a little more and loses more elasticity"

 

She had a lamb last yr. She bagged out huge like a cow and her single lamb out grew other lambs who were 2 weeks older.

 

She still bounced back to half her bag size, has no teeth and is in the old age corral and By God, she sure tells me what to do when I am in the barn. I make sure I feed her first or I will hear LOUD PROTESTING for a long time.

 

Oh yea, she wasn't supposed to be bred last yr but she back up to a fence to the ram....

 

She a fine old grand ewe....I have five generations starting with her....so I guess she is a great, great, great, grandma??

 

Diane

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I have a twelve year old (no, I guess she's thirteen this year) who I keep saying I'm not going to breed her. Guess the only way to not breed a ewe is a) not have a ram on the property or :rolleyes: not have the ewe on the property. She's managed to get knocked up every year. She's a great one with the young ewes - if I keep her in with them I never have one reject a lamb and they grow up very calm.

 

I've had to pull her lambs the last couple times - it's great experience because there's, er, plenty of room.

 

She's a Dorset and had a giant bag seven years ago when she came here. Now she trips over it in the weeks before she lambs. I swear she could raise quads, but what she does is have these great big twins - the size of my biggest singles, but two of them. They always favor the terminal sire, too, in size, structure, and growth rates, which is wonderful. I don't know whether that's a Dorset thing. I wish I had about twenty of her, only younger.

 

She's bred to the fabuloso Texel cross ram I got from Massachusets last summer. I can't wait to see what the lambs will be like. The ones I've seen so far have been terrific - very cold hardy, if nothing else! But also chunky little monkeys, smart about finding feed, and growing great even in this cold windy wet weather we're having. I had a half-dozen born one night when the wind chill was five below zero and they all hit the ground running. I lost one of my Border Leister sired lambs that night, and they are usually pretty hardy themselves.

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