Pregnancy toxemia is a metabolic disease of late-gestation ewes that causes significant suffering and death in sheep flocks globally, yet is largely preventable through appropriate nutritional management.
Pregnancy toxemia causes significant suffering in affected ewes. The progressive loss of coordination, blindness, and inability to rise causes distress and vulnerability to predation or exposure. Ewes that cannot rise are unable to care for their lambs, resulting in neonatal death that adds to the welfare toll. The disease is substantially preventable through management practices that are well understood in modern sheep husbandry, making its continued prevalence in some flocks a management failure rather than an inevitable consequence of sheep farming. Early identification of at-risk ewes through pregnancy scanning and targeted supplementation represents one of the most effective welfare interventions available to sheep producers.