Sheep Abortion Focus

Abortion Focus which includes a simple to use calculator has been provided to help measure the costs using farm records .Use of a tally sheet can be useful to help quantify the losses at lambing time – an example record sheet can be downloaded for this purpose.

Reducing lamb losses is the key to improving profitability of sheep flocks.

In the UK it has been estimated that around 85% of lambs survive to be sold.!. With well in excess of 1 million lambs dying along the way each year due to various reasons. Many deaths are due to diseases some are not so obvious in the case of abortions, especially if lambs that are lost early in pregnancy are included; these show up as ‘empty/barren’ ewes.

Data shows that over 4% of the national flock is affected each year diseases, some are contagious and passed from sheep-to-sheep, which means they remain in the flock with low levels of abortion each year with occasional abortions outbreaks or peaks seen as abortion storms along the way.

Much of this loss is preventable if measures are taken to monitor and manage them.