Diarrhea in lambs

Diarrhea in young lambs is the leading cause of mortality during the lambing period. It mainly affects animals in the first days and weeks of life. It is not a single disease but a syndrome: several different microbes cause the same picture. What kills the lamb is not the microbe itself, it is the loss of water and mineral salts caused by diarrhea. A lamb is a very small reservoir of water: it dehydrates in a few hours, much faster than an adult. A lamb that has diarrhea in the morning may be lying down and unable to get up in the evening. The disease concentrates where births are concentrated: the busier the sheepfold, the damper the litter, the more cases multiply over the course of the lambing season.

📷 G-R Mottez, Unsplash ; Ian Hutchinson, Unsplash ; Dirk Ingo Franke, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons

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