Entropion

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Well, I've got my first ever case of entropion. This is a very inbred lamb (accident) so at least it will be easy to cull out. Meanwhile, it seems I've got three different methods of treatment to choose from and I'm wondering which will be the best balance between easy and effective.

 

One recommendation is to inject the eyelid with pen-procaine. This approach appeals to me because it's simple and won't freak my husband out too much, who will have to hold the lamb during the procedure.

 

The next is to take a stitch holding the eyelid out. This would make me a little nervous as I can't find any good pics of this and have never seen it done. I'd be afraid of tacking it down too tight.

 

Finally, the old method of taking a strip of skin off the lid seems most recommended, but scary even for me. I can't imagine being able to do this with my very squeamish hubby holding the lamb.

 

Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

[Eileen Stein]

I'd go with the pen-procaine if it were me, but the one time I ran into entropion I was able to fix it by just rolling the eyelid outward a few times as soon as I noticed it, and then again maybe half an hour later. That seemed to fix it, but I suppose I must have had a very mild case.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

I cut a thin long piece of duct tape, rolled the lid to the proper postion and taped it. A day later I took it off and it was fine.

 

Diane

[kajarrel]

Similar to the duct tape idea, I take a mediam sized rubber band and put it around the head, over the nose and under the eyes and ears. Pull the skin under the eye down slightly and the rubber band will hold it in place. You can usually remove the rubber band in a day or so. If longer - remove for a short time daily.

 

Kim

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Diane, is there anything you haven't fixed with duct tape? Have you considered renaming your farm MacGyver Acres?

 

I think from now on, I will add a roll of duct tape to my "first aid bucket". This happens to be the only item I can get hold of today (except maybe the rubber band, if there's one in the old house somewhere).

 

I did try rolling it back a couple times yesterday, and when I first discovered it, but I guess it's pretty bad. The eyelashes are still pointed inward, though not quite as badly.

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Becca,

 

The rubber band trick works wonders. There are also Michel wound clips that work great. The rubber band trick also has the advantage of leaving a stripe of bare skin across the nose that remains for months, so you have a visible reminder that the lamb is not breeding stock without having to look back at record books.

 

I've never tried duct tape, but it would make sense. The biggest advantage of the rubber band and duct-tape type solutions is that they are easy one-person jobs. All the others almost require a second person, and are certainly much easier if one person holds the lamb while the other does the procedure.

[DeltaBluez Tess]

1. Duct Tape

2. Baling Twine

3. WD 40

 

 

...are my best friends.....

 

I have used all/some of the above for:

 

1. Prolapsed sheep

2. Eyelida

3. Closing gaping wounds

3. Used in holding splints together for broken legs

4. Fence repair

5. Car repair

6. Fixing a crook

7. Horse Blankets

8. Fixing holes in boots

 

and just the other day, one of the guys showed me a wallet he made from Duct tape....cool....

 

 

so I guess this is MacGyver Acres......

 

 

Diane

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

OK, so for two days I've been manipulating this eyelid with my own hands, with tape (I didn't have duct tape but attempted to use surgical tape - not sticky enough), with a rubber band - no go. I've never seen an entropion case before but I've started getting this feeling this is a pretty bad one!

 

So I just girded my loins and tried the injection. I had my leatherman, too, and was ready to do the surgery if it came to that. But the injection worked like a charm. The eyelid blew up like a balloon and the eyelashed rotated out just as nice as can be.

 

The lamb screamed like crazy then suddenly got this amazed look, ran back to Mom and banged into her like a two-day-old lamb should (she was pretty tentative before). The old ewe sniffed to see whether it was the same lamb and then I swear she looked at me with reproach in her eyes. Like, "Hey, I was kind of enjoying that low-maintanance lamb . . ."

 

That may have been the most gratifying bit of doctoring I've ever done on a sheep. Though I'd be perfectly happy not to ever have to do it again!

[Valhalla]

Hey Rebecca,

 

I just had a ewe twin yesterday morning. The second born lamb, still wet, was already nursing, but the first born lamb wasn't up and nursing. This lamb had droopy ears and really sleepy eyes, so I knew she wasn't right. I jugged them and attempted to get the lamb to nurse but no luck, so milked out the ewe and tubed the lamb. After that tubing, she picked up a little and then was nursing on her own after that! Once she perked up, and her eyes were open more, I noticed that she had entropion.

 

Did the penicillin injection thing and she was back up spunky and 100% lamb-like! Do you think that she didn't nurse because of the pain from the entropion?

[Valhalla]

Also, does anyone know if this is hereditary and should this ewe and the lamb be culled?

[kajarrel]

I doubt if the lack of nursing had anything to do with the entropion - I quite honestly don't usually notice it until a couple of days have passed (when I see a lamb with a "weepy" eye) and my lambs would surely be dead by that point if it interfered with nursing. Since entropion is heritable, I do use it as a factor in deciding which lambs will be lamb chops (as Bill wrote, it's easy to see which lambs have had it because, since I use the "rubber band" method, they get a hairless stripe across their nose), but don't cull ewes who have affected lambs (unless they have some other undesirable characteristics). On the big scale of things, it really hasn't been a big problem in my flock so I probably give it less attention than I should. Here's a fairly decent link concerning entropion.

 

Kim

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

The lamb I had definitely had a bad start from the entropion - but part of the problem was I piddled around for two days before solving the problem. The lamb certainly had trouble seeing and was in terrible pain - she cried and cried from the moment she was born.

 

I'm thinking entropion is a simple recessive, so the affected lamb is definitely chops. This one seems to have been the result of a multiple inbreeding (accident) so it will be simple to cull out the carriers - the ram is already gone, in fact.

[Bill Fosher]

Hi Rebecca,

 

I think that entropion is a little more complicated than a simple recessive -- but the advice is generally that lambs that expressed it should not be kept for breeding, and the matings that produced it should not be repeated. For practical purposes, this usually means that it is controlled by shipping rams that throw it. However, it will remain in the ewe lines waiting for the chance to express itself.

 

I knew one producer who was considering breeding his sheep only to rams that were known to throw it, and then over time actually eliminating entropion by keeping ewes lambs that didn't express the condition until he could essentially clear a few lines. I'm not sure how far he went with that little experiment.

 

Did the ram that threw it come from us?

[Rebecca, Irena Farm]

Did the ram that threw it come from us?

No, not directly. But he was Izzy's son (I'm not at home so I can't tell you which number HE was, lol). Izzy was the NCC/BL cross ram. He's no longer with us either, except in spirit (he contributed to growing out a very nice pup last year ).

 

The ram was a grandson of a son of the ewe he bred. In addition, his mother was the result of a sibling breeding (same sire, the ram that was the son of the dam of the entropion ram). I think that's right! The ram was a sneaky little thing who absolutely wouldn't be kept up - I hadn't even intended to keep him intact but I used old brittle bands that year. Ooops.

 

So I'm fairly confident that once I can the ewe and any other double bred ewes from that ram, I should be back to just your average chance of seeing this. Once in eight years (about 200 lambs) seems pretty reasonable.

 

We've almost finished lambing and I've seen no more entropion, even from the double bred ewes. I didn't keep any Izzy ewes so I couldn't tell ya whether he was implicated for sure.