Instant Insights: Improving the health and welfare of ewes and lambs

This book features four peer-reviewed reviews on improving the health and welfare of ewes and lambs.

The first chapter provides a comprehensive overview of some of the major welfare considerations affecting ewes, including longevity, mortality, undernutrition and body condition score, environment and housing, lameness and foot rot, ectoparasites and on-farm euthanasia.

The second chapter explores the role of precision livestock farming (PLF) and other digital technologies in addressing key health and welfare challenges faced by sheep. The chapter summarises the range of PLF technologies, from automatic feeders and accelerometers, to GPS collars and proximity sensors.

The third chapter examines the main issues affecting the welfare of lambs, including the handling and training of lambs from birth, causes of lamb mortality, techniques for marking lambs, as well as issues regarding the weaning of lambs and the control of infectious diseases in the lamb population.

The final chapter discusses neonatal lamb mortality and the factors that can contribute to the death of newborn lambs, including dystocia and colostrum intake. The chapter also reviews the impacts of internal factors (genetics, ewe parity, litter size, lamb gender) and management interactions (nutrition, lambing environment, fostering/artificial rearing) on lamb survival.