Milk Fever

Milk Fever or lambing sickness is a condition, which occurs following lambing or kidding in sheep or goats. The disease is associated with a deficiency of calcium. If not treated, high levels of mortality are experienced. The disease can be treated with an injection of calcium and other minerals.

Symptoms and Causes Control and Treatment Measures References and Further Reading

Milk Fever, also known as Periparturient Hypocalcaemia, is usually seen in high producing dairy goats or dairy sheep one to three weeks after kidding or lambing.

Initially the doe is ataxic, nervous and hyperactive but quickly becomes sternally recumbent. The doe stops eating and the ears are cold. The pupils are dilated and respond very slowly or not at all to a flashlight being shone directly at them. The head may be turned back to the flank. Sometimes the hind legs are splayed out behind the doe. The heart beats quickly and weakly. Death follows bloat, regurgitation of rumen contents and aspiration. The course of disease can be as little as a few hours, e.g. the animal may be found dead in the morning.

 

Milk Fever can usually treated with an intravenous and sub-cutaneous injection of calcium borogluconate solution (20 mg Ca++/ml). Response should be dramatic. The animal usually starts to shiver and brightens up by the time treatment is finished. If she does not, it may be that the diagnosis is incorrect or is complicated by another disease.

It is important that injections of calcium are only given where there is strong evidence of the disease. Calcium can easily cause death if given by intravenous injection to an animal with normal calcium levels.

Poor feeding and lack of nutrition over a long period are normally required for milk fever / hypocalcaemia to develop. So, good attention to nutrition on a year-round basis should help to prevent this problem from occurring.

Goats and sheep require calcium rich diets after kidding, and even more so in the case of high-producing milking animals. In areas where it is available, Alfalfa hay can provide this. However, many different interactions take place between mineral elements in the metabolism of ruminant animals, and the most obvious cause of the problem - a lack of dietary calcium - may not be the correct one. Hypocalcaemia may also be related to intake of high-oxalate plants such as sorrel and oxalis, but can also be related to low magnesium levels. However, a lack of dietary calcium is likely to be a factor in animals fed largely on cereal grains and cereal crop forages, which are low in calcium (for this reason some flours used in bread making for human consumption have added calcium).