We had a lamb die earlier this year. (Gracie and George’s ram lamb.) The first quick diagnosis was heat stroke, as it was on one of the hottest and most humid days of the year. But I had a necropsy done on him, and it showed bacterial pneumonia and extremely low levels of copper and selenium.
I’ve been doing BoSE shots when lambs are born, but that clearly isn’t enough. I’ve also been free-feeding kelp to help with the copper deficiency.
I’ve now added 1/4 goat minerals to their sheep mineral mix to help more with the copper, and I am free feeding brewers’ yeast, which has a lot of B vitamins as well as selenium.
I wasn’t sure how to feed the yeast, and was trying to mix it with the grain rations in the morning, but that really didn’t work. The big sheep got much more than the lambs, no matter what I tried. I asked on the ISBONA mailing list, and the recommendation was to free feed, so I did that this morning. I sure hope that is okay because wow is it popular.
The kelp remains really popular as well. They are probably going through a buckt and a half each week, and it hasn’t let up.
Interesting .. I remember seeing somewhere a photo of sheep digging into rocky terrain to lick minerals according to the caption.