Lambing season is the most welfare-intensive period in sheep farming, with significant mortality risks for both ewes and lambs. Understanding common challenges enables better preventive management.
Lambing season concentrates welfare risk in sheep systems, with high potential for suffering from cold, hunger, injury, and failed maternal bonding. The welfare of the ewe is equally important - ewes experiencing prolonged labor suffer pain and exhaustion, and inadequately managed dystocia can result in permanent injury. A welfare-centered approach to lambing provides appropriate shelter, maintains staffing levels that allow timely assistance, has protocols for hypothermic lamb rewarming and supplementary feeding, manages body condition scoring pre-lambing to reduce dystocia risk, and provides pain relief for ewes requiring assisted births. Monitoring individual ewe-lamb pairs in the critical early hours makes a substantial difference to welfare outcomes.