Health and Care

There are a number of diseases that can affect sheep and lambs, and some of them are even contagious to people. Knowing how to recognize, limit the risk, treat, and prevent diseases is fundamental to raising a healthy sheep flock.

Make use of Penn State Extension’s resources on sheep health, including body condition scoring, feed management and delivery, preventing parasites, improving newborn lamb survival, and shearing. You’ll also find tips on managing parasites and weaning to limit stress on ewes and lambs.

Common Sheep Diseases

Several sheep diseases and parasites can affect your flock. Learning how to recognize them means you can reduce economic losses and improve animal welfare. It’s also important to learn about the spread of diseases and what you can do to minimize the spread.

Stomach worms are the most common parasites to sheep and can cause unthriftiness and loss of weight. Ticks can also cause both physical harm to sheep and transmit pathogens that cause diseases. There are more than 20 species of ticks in Pennsylvania alone; however, only a few are pests of livestock.

Sheep Health and Care

There are a variety of factors that can affect the health of your sheep. Successful sheep production depends on keeping your flock healthy and free of disease. Being able to recognize the symptoms, understand the causes and how to treat different diseases is important for anyone wanting to raise sheep. This applies to both commercial producers, homesteaders, and those wanting to raise sheep on a few acres of land.

You can use a range of techniques, such as body condition scoring, to assess the health of your flock. Producers have been using ultrasound technology for pregnancy confirmation for many years, but it can also be used to improve a flock by way of measuring carcass characteristics.

Using EBV (Estimated Breeding Values) data generated through the National Sheep Improvement Program is another avenue that many producers might overlook. It can be used to help promote genetic resistance to parasites. The genetics of your flock are also important when it comes to deciding which lambs you want to keep for replacements to improve your sheep performance.

Grazing management and good nutrition are important because they help minimize the impact of internal parasites. Protein nutrition affects a sheep’s resilience to gastrointestinal parasites, while calcium supports skeletal and nervous system functions.

Vaccines are commonly used to protect a flock against disease. It’s important to vaccinate at the right time and with the right product. How you handle the vaccines, from the time you purchase them to the time you administer them to the animals, is also crucial.

Sheep Farm Biosecurity Management

To prevent or minimize the transmission of disease within and between herds and flocks, producers should follow biosecurity management practices that include testing and screening, isolation and quarantine, immunization, selection purchasing, animal monitoring, and herd evaluation. You can measure the effectiveness of the practices followed using Penn State Extensions Small-farm Biosecurity Measures Rubric.

Guidelines are available for producers in the form of Animal Safety Quality Assurance Programs. For sheep producers, there is the Sheep Safety Quality Assurance (SSQA) program, which the American Sheep Industry Association developed, in conjunction with Colorado State University. Using research and education, the aim of the program is to ensure maximum consumer confidence in sheep products and improve management practices.