Difficult lambing and neonatal health challenges cause significant welfare harms to ewes and lambs that are preventable with appropriate monitoring, nutritional management, and timely intervention.
The lambing period concentrates welfare risk for both ewes and lambs in a narrow time window. Ewes experiencing dystocia face prolonged labor pain and physical injury. Lambs born in difficult deliveries face oxygen deprivation, hypothermia, and reduced colostrum access. Intensive lambing management — more staff, more monitoring, faster intervention — dramatically reduces both mortality and suffering but requires investment and commitment. As precision livestock technologies improve, electronic monitoring systems increasingly enable earlier detection of problems, narrowing the window between problem onset and intervention.