Metabolic diseases including twin lamb disease, hypocalcaemia, and hypomagnesaemia cause significant welfare harm in ewes around lambing, with prevention requiring proactive nutritional management.
Metabolic disease welfare harm is severe and often rapid. Ewes experiencing pregnancy toxaemia suffer progressive neurological deterioration over days, while hypocalcaemia produces sudden inability to rise from a conscious but helpless state - both represent significant suffering. The preventability of these conditions through good nutritional management means that metabolic disease cases represent failures of preventive welfare rather than unavoidable natural events. Regular body condition scoring throughout pregnancy, appropriate energy supplementation for ewes carrying multiples, and access to mineral supplements pre-lambing are cost-effective welfare interventions that prevent suffering at the individual animal level while improving production outcomes.