Mastitis in sheep is a painful and economically significant condition that is often underdiagnosed. Early recognition and treatment prevents chronic welfare harm and maintains udder function for lamb rearing.
Mastitis causes significant suffering through udder pain, fever, and systemic illness in affected ewes, and indirect welfare harm to lambs through reduced milk availability and poor growth. Peracute gangrenous mastitis is particularly severe - the rapid tissue necrosis creates extreme pain and systemic sepsis that can be fatal without aggressive treatment. The welfare challenge is early detection in a species that tends to stoically conceal pain - daily examination of the udder around lambing is the primary welfare safeguard. Subclinical mastitis is a chronic welfare problem that goes undetected because ewes appear normal but suffer reduced milk production and chronic low-grade udder inflammation. Regular somatic cell count monitoring in dairy sheep flocks provides welfare surveillance; equivalent monitoring in meat flocks requires observation of lamb growth rates as a proxy indicator.