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Case report: failure of passive transfer and neonatal infections in a cohort of lambs
Abstract
This case report details an outbreak of neonatal lamb deaths, in which 84 of the 1203 potential lambs (from scanning) died and 70 developed septic polyarthritis. Investigation of the Scottish lowland flock of 650 breeding ewes revealed good lambing-time hygiene; poor ewe nutrition was suspected to have led to poor colostrum quality or quantity, resulting in failure of passive transfer of immunity in lambs. Ewe body condition at lambing was poor, with low blood urea nitrogen and albumin levels in pre-lambing ewe metabolic blood profiles.
Lamb mortality is an important contributor to production loss on sheep farms and is a welfare concern for the lambs. Variation between farms is huge, an international review found that neonatal losses can range from less than 2% up to 50% (Dwyer et al, 2016); neonatal infections have been found to be a significant contributing factor (Wiener et al, 1983; Huffman et al, 1985; Green and Morgan, 1993; Holmøy et al. 2017). Links between lamb mortality and failure of passive transfer of immunity (FPT) have been made (Sawyer et al, 1977), due to the near agammaglobulinaemic nature of lambs at birth (Maden et al, 2003). However, the risk factors for FPT and neonatal lamb deaths are multifactorial, depending on lamb, ewe and farm factors (Christley et al, 2003; Dwyer et al, 2016). As such, the blanket use of antibiotic medications in new-born lambs has become prevalent, with concerns that this could potentially increase selection pressure for antibiotic resistance (Priestley, 2018). Therefore investigation of the cause of lamb mortality and underlying risk factors on farms is necessary to improve lamb survival without excessive antibiotic use.
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