RIP Zena

12 hours after birth

Lambs grow rapidly in the final few weeks of pregnancy. This puts an enormous burden on the mother - as well as getting enough feed for  herself, she has to get enough to supply the growing lambs. With a very large uterus, feeding is difficult because the stomach and everything else gets squashed up. Even with high -energy feeds we were unable to keep up with the requirements and she  started breaking down fat stores to provide energy. The breakdown products of fat are ketones ,which are burned to provide energy.  But too high ketone level causes listlessness and going off feed, which is what happened to Zena. 

All this is made worse with multiple births (  double the lambs to grow ) , and large lambs ( more to grow and they take up more space, making feeding difficult) 

So having got through pregnancy and lambing it all provided too much , and in spite of intensive feeding , she succumbed. 

So RIP Zena