Pregnancy toxaemia is a metabolic disease of ewes carrying multiple lambs that causes severe suffering and high mortality if not prevented through nutritional management.
Pregnancy toxaemia causes extreme suffering in affected ewes, progressing from metabolic disturbance to neurological signs and death over 3-5 days if untreated. The suffering is entirely preventable through appropriate nutritional management based on scanning results. Ewes carrying multiple lambs in late pregnancy have massively elevated energy demands that hay alone cannot meet. Failure to supplement these ewes represents a preventable welfare failure.