Pregnancy toxaemia is a metabolic crisis in late-pregnancy ewes that causes significant suffering and is largely preventable through appropriate nutrition management.
Pregnancy toxaemia causes real suffering: affected ewes become dull, disoriented, and eventually unable to stand. The condition develops when the energy demands of late pregnancy — particularly in ewes carrying multiple foetuses — exceed what the ewe can consume in her third trimester. It is almost entirely preventable with appropriate flock management: pregnancy scanning to identify multiples, targeted supplementary feeding for high-risk ewes, and body condition score monitoring throughout pregnancy. Farms that invest in scanning and targeted feeding incur modest additional costs but achieve dramatically lower toxaemia rates. The welfare return on this investment is clear: preventing a condition that causes prolonged metabolic distress and death in pregnant ewes.