Metabolic diseases in sheep during late pregnancy and early lactation cause significant preventable welfare harm that nutritional management can prevent.
Ewes with pregnancy toxemia experience neurological deterioration including blindness, incoordination, and recumbency over days before death without treatment. Hypocalcaemia causes acute collapse and recumbency. Hypomagnesaemia causes sudden death in apparently healthy animals. All three conditions are largely preventable through appropriate mineral and energy supplementation in risk periods.