Breeder Friends,
I hope you can help me with a strange problem. I have a ewe who gave
birth to a large (6.75 lb.) and healthy single ram lamb on March
13th. Her earliest possible 5-month due date was April 1st, so this
lamb was 18 days premature. My ewe had no milk at all. After
keeping the lamb with her for a week and switching to bottle feeding
him, we finally grafted him onto another ewe who also had a large
single lamb, also had plenty of milk. So far, so good. Both lambs
are now large and healthy.
However, back to the first ewe. We did a manual exam to determine
that there were no other lambs inside her, two days after he was
born. She was not dialated much, so the exam was perhaps not as deep
or thorough as it might have otherwise been. I also put her on
procaine pennecillan G for 5 days, as a precaution to make sure that
no infection set in just in case there was something else inside her,
since we were not sure why she gave birth so prematurely. We kept
her in the lamb pen with her lamb during that time, and then let her
out to pasture with the other ewes.
I have kept my eye on this ewe ever since that time. This girl seems
to be gaining weight each week, to the point where she looks very
pregnant, as if she could deliver twins any moment. Her udder is
still not bagging up, but she is beginning to walk like ewes walk
(back legs slightly apart) in late stages of pregnancy. She appears
healthy, and is eating and drinking just fine. But she has often
come back into the barn by herself to stand near the lamb jugs where
the new mothers and newborn lambs are kept, as if she is looking for her lamb.
This morning again I shooed her out of the barn two or three
times. She doesn't seem to care about being with the rest of the
flock right now -- she is acting just like a ewe about to give birth,
and she certainly looks like it too.
Does anyone know if there is a chance that a ewe can lamb twice? Is
it possible that she could have maintained a pregnancy with other
lambs after birthing one fully developed lamb early? The first lamb
was born March 13, so this is almost a month later. Honestly I would
call the vet, but there is nothing here to make me think this ewe is
unhealthy. I am completely stumped.
Mary Swindell
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