One day last week I found a lamb in the field wobbly and inclined to collapse behind. Apart from that he was healthy and sucking the mother. Next day his back legs were fully paralysed. He was dragging himself around using front legs only. The insides of the hind legs were red from being dragged along the grass.

The vet thinks that he might have an abscess on his spine and prescribed a course of Noroclov (1 ml per 20kg liveweight per day for three days).

With the 3 day treatment period passed the lamb is still paralysed behind. He is indoors, eating all around him, even taking milk from a bottle, but getting no better. He just sits up on his bottom like a dog. I am wondering if he injured his back.

The lamb is well fleshed but with a 42 day meat withholding period on the Noroclov, slaughter for meat is not an immediate option. If anybody has encountered this situation and knows the solution, I would like to hear from them.

In the meantime I noticed last week in Tullow mart that ewes with lambs at foot had got a lot more expensive. I should have bought more when they were cheap.

Demand was still poor for the ewes and hoggets in lamb. While the 50 kg wether hoggets or non-pregnant ewe hoggets were freely making €130 per head, the finest of in-lamb hoggets at this weight in Tullow were not even bid to €110 each. In hindsight the owners should have kept the ram away from them.

P.S.

I had the singles in the yard this morning. For interest I weighed one of the better lambs. Born on January 28, making it about 70 days old, it weighed 36 kg. If I assume a 7 kg birthweight, that’s a gain of over 0.4 kg a day since birth on grass only to both lamb and mother. Dare I say it, but I have cattle that gained less weight over the same period.

The grass is a reseed from last Autumn.