Pregnancy toxaemia (twin lamb disease) is a serious metabolic disease in ewes carrying multiple lambs, causing significant suffering and death when nutritional management fails in late pregnancy.
Pregnancy toxaemia causes rapid, severe welfare deterioration - affected ewes go from appearing mildly dull to recumbent and dying within days. Crucially, this disease is almost entirely preventable through good nutritional management. Monitoring body condition score, pregnancy scanning to identify multiple-bearing ewes, and providing adequate high-energy feed in late pregnancy prevents the energy deficit that triggers the disease. Welfare improvement here is a stockmanship and management problem more than a veterinary problem - treatment in established cases is often unsuccessful, making prevention the only effective welfare intervention. Farmers who invest in pregnancy scanning and targeted nutrition for multiple-bearing ewes have dramatically lower disease incidence.