Sleepy Sickness Follows Fall Of Snow

Press, Volume CII, Issue 30212, 17 August 1963, Page 6

Sleepy Sickness Follows Fall Of Snow

Last week’s heavy snowfalls came at a critical time for farmers whose flocks were either lambing or close to lambing. With natural feed supplies under snow for five or six days and ewes close to lambing getting only hay over this period there has been an inevitable aftermath of sleepy sickness, dopiness or pregnancy toxaemia in ewe flocks and farmers in the Waiau district this week said that it was likely that some ewes on most properties in their area would be affected to some degree.

The general picture seemed to be that while losses on individual properties w’ould not be very high, there would be a reduction in the lambing potential of flocks where ewes did appear to recover with a proportion of these not bearing live lambs and there would also be an effect on the wool clip from break.

Waiau farms had their worst snow storm for almost 20 years. On the 530-acre Bewdley property of Mr G. O. Burbury and the 475-acre property of Mr J. A. Sunckell, which are about two miles from Waiau on the inland road to Kaikoura, the snow lay from 12 inches deep on the flats up to 15 inches deep higher up. Snow was lying at dayforeaik on Wednesday of last week and it continued to snow all day. The snow followed floods in the nearby Mason river in July, when, Mr Burbury said, about 10 to 12 inches of rain fell in a day, but up to the end of June the district was quite dry. Mr Burbury brought his ewes down from the top part of his farm to paddocks near the homestead by making tracks through the snow with his tractor and stamping out tracks on foot where the tractor would not go. It was not until Monday of this week that a thaw once again gave stock access to natural feed supplies. Mr Sunckell said that in this thaw, water virtually wasted the snow off the slopes. During the snow, Mr Burbury and Mr Sunckell were feeding out hay only to their flocks. Mr Burbury said that the sheep were probably starting to feel the pinch about Friday and dopiness became apparent in the flock on Saturday—after about three days—when feeding of nuts and molasses block begun.

Mr Burbury at first brought affected sheep into the shed for treatment, but subsequently treated them where they were in the paddock and got them on to black barley greenfeed at the earliest opportunity.

Up till Wednesday Mr Burbury estimated that about 5 per cent, of his 1000-ewe flock had been affected by the trouble and of the 40 or 50 ewes involved he said that losses had amounted to about 10. In his estimation efforts at treating affected sheep had paid dividends, but he said that the prime consideration had been to keep those ewes that were still showing no signs of the trouble in a fit condition. Injection of a handful of ewes with calcium borogluconate had not been successful, he said. About half of them died, but they had been some of the worst affected. The main treatment has been with a drench of 2ozs of glycerine in water with a thin gruel or porridge cooked out of sheep nuts, the whole mixture occupying a half to two-thirds of a beer bottle. Most of the ewes seemed to take this mixture fairly well but the veterinarian at Waikari, Mr A. N. Bruere, emphasised this week that care had to be taken not to choke the sheep. The purpose of the sheep nut porridge is to provide the sheep with some nutriment. Team Effort Treating of the sick ewes in this way has been a team effort on farms in the area with the farmers’ wives cooperating in soaking, heating up and breaking down the nuts. Mrs Burbury said that up until Wednesday at midday she had prepared gruel for about 86 treatments and Mrs Sunckell was also out treating sheep near the house when a representative of “The Press” called. Mr Sunckell, who has more than 1300 ewes on his property, had one group on the point of lambing and another of about 650 due to lamb in about two to three weeks. He said that he had no trouble at all in the ewes on the point of lambing, apart from some losses of lambs in the cold, but by about Sunday sleepy sickness was showing up in the other mob and he had 18 ewes affected by Wednesday. Affected ewes were at first brought into a woolshed and subsequently carted down near the homestead when there was enough to make a trailer load. He had lost only one ewe by Wednesday. and he said that it might

not have died from sleepy sickness. He thought that 14 which were back on feed stood a reasonable chance of survival, but he was not optimistic about their chances of bearing lambs and one lamb was born dead while the reporter was in the paddock. Before the snow fell the ewes were receiving grass and meadow hay but during the snow they got no grass. Mr Sunckell noted that the sleepy sickness seemed to show up in the mornings after a cold night and it seemed to cease after he introduced molasses blocks. Discussing the likely effect of sleepy sickness on the lambing potential of affected ewes which appeared to recover, Dr. J. W. McLean, head of the veterinary department ait Lincoln College, said it was his opinion that a proportion of the ewes would have live lambs. It largely depended on how soon the farmer detected the onset of the trouble and took action to get the ewe feeding again. Where a ewe looked a bit dull, was given two doses of glycerine and put on to greenfeed and began feeding again, it was likely to pull round and produce a live lamb. But where ewes were srick for two or three days and off their feed, they were either likely to die or produce a dead lamb and survive themselves. He felt that glycerine had its greatest usefulness in getting a ewe feeding again where the trouble was noticed in the earliest stages. A break in the wool was a characteristic of the trouble. Both Messrs Burbury and Sunckell found that there had been at least one redeeming feature about the weather in the last two weeks. They both considered that the position would have been a lot worse had there not been the sudden thaw early this week. Had the snow been followed by heavy frosts they might have had it about a great deal longer and the troubles with their sheep would then have been a great dead worse. Mr Burbury said that one of his ewes, which had been in pretty poor condition, had shown a new lease of life after being shorn. It is apparently the opinion of some farmers that shearing can have a beneficial effect on sheep with sleepy sickness. Mr Bruere recommends that some normal sheep should be run with sick sheep in the belief that the

example of the flit animals may induce the others to resume grazing—a psychological factor It was also better for them to be out on greenfeed or grass than sitting about sheds. Mr Bruene said he felt that it was hard to lay down hard and fast rules for treatment of sheep on every farm. The treatment of individual flocks required different considerations. Quite a lot could be done, and where the trouble occurred flor reasons other than the exceptional snow conditions recently experienced, the feeding of the flock could, with advantage, be examined to see if, for example, nuts or additional greenfeed should be supplied. Mr Bruene said that quite a lot of ewes could go from milk fever to sleepy sickness wriltlhout any dear line of demamcaiiion between the two. Thus it was desirable to give ewes treated with calcium borogluconate for milk fever a dose of glycerine in water two hours later to prevent the possible development of

sleepy sickness. He said that the farmer could tell whether his ewes were suffering from milk fever or Sleepy sickness. Calcium borogluconate gave a quick response where milk fever was involved. Lack of such a response would indicate sleepy sickness. Ewes which were suffering from milk fever went down and refused to get up ait all, the back legs became stiff, they usually became siighi.ily blown and as a rule were running ait the nose. On the other band ewes with sleepy sickness would get up again but usually wandered round aimlessly and seemed to be blind. Ait an adv-i.noed stage there was also twitching art the eyas and mouth. In some uses an important contributing factor to outbreaks of sleepy sickness had been the incidence of foot abcess, and on properties where this was a problem use of the foot abscess vaccine next season might be considered.