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| You've gotten great advice so far(avoid contact with wife, check for cut ears and bag check them). If you find cut ears I'd dump them all. I know of one guy in central iowa that buys calls, breeds them and sells them. So crooks are out there. Assuming that you bought from an honest seller, I'd say keep the ewes and get aggressive. Any ewe with a bad bag needs to hit the road. Calls are worth 70cents, that's more than bred ewes were going for a year ago. What kind of lambing building do you have, hows the air quality? The lamb that was being taken care of the ewe that died is the one I'm most concerned with. I'd suspect pnemonia if you've seen it drink and the ewe had one good side. Pnemonia in little lambs is hard to catch depending on the strain and their dead quick. I beileive in a strong approach here. Any lamb that you have seen suck in the past and now shows up thin gets a .1ml Draxxin. If I can hear respiratory problems then it gets Draxxin plus a half IM dose of Nuflor. Doc Kennedy from the Pipestone clinic now goes as far to say they should get a full dose of each. That seems over kill to me, but what ever it takes.
I'm not the guy to advise you on bottle lambs, I hate them as they are touchy. I will say that if you get a ewe with twins that has one bad side and one good side, just completely pull one lamb. Supplementing doesn't work very well IMHO. For the ewe that was just a bad mother I would build a coulple of head gates out of wood that fit in a corner of a jug. Let her stand there until her attitude gets adjusted, it may take a few days. I have a couple that get used with my suffolks. Don't need them near as much with specks. If she's wild in a headgate a shot of ace will help if your vet will give it to you. That will mellow her out for a few hours. Emails in profile if you have any other questions.
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New at raising sheep-might have been a bad mistake!
