Farm Animal Welfare

Sheep Pregnancy Scanning and Welfare Planning

Pregnancy scanning enables targeted nutritional management of ewes carrying different numbers of lambs, preventing pregnancy toxaemia and improving both ewe and lamb welfare.

Key Facts

Ewes carrying triplets require 30% more energy than singles in late pregnancy
Scanning accuracy of 95%+ enables precise nutritional targeting by litter size
Unscanned flocks have higher rates of pregnancy toxaemia and neonatal mortality
Scanning enables decisions about additional supervision for ewes carrying multiple lambs
The cost of scanning is recovered many times over through improved survival rates

Welfare Considerations

Pregnancy toxaemia in multiple-bearing ewes causes severe metabolic suffering and high mortality for both ewes and lambs. Scanning provides the information needed to prevent this entirely through targeted nutrition, making it one of the highest welfare-value interventions available to sheep farmers.

What You Can Do

Implement pregnancy scanning as standard practice for all ewes in your flock
Provide increased energy supplementation to scanned multiple-bearing ewes in late pregnancy
Use scanning data to plan additional supervision resources for high-risk ewes at lambing