Unresponsive sheep eye lesions

RE: Unresponsive sheep eye lesions

Julian Earl — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 11:44:31 GMT

Hello Iain, hope you enjoyed Newquay?

I agree re your general approach, these are difficult cases. Isolation if possible, forget topicals. SVS had a paper years ago stating even with injectables 1/3 don't respond/1/3 do but 1/3 recur after oxytetracycline LA. I think that fluoroqionolones work better as so macrolides. Still, always a difficult problem. I lost a client by refusing to certify a potentially valuable pedigree-Suffolk ram as being healthy enough to attend a show while it had a runny eye. I didn't know if it had OIKC and it could have ruined his reputation, and mine plus caused big problems in a new flock for all I knew! He didn't like my safty-first attitude.

Should we avoid fluoroquinolones for this nowadays?

N.B.Always remember the I in OIKC stands for infectious!

RE: Unresponsive sheep eye lesions

Iain Richards — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 08:43:51 GMT

Chlamydial and mycoplasma infections are top of the list. Both are highly contagious, both are jolly difficult to treat. Varied folks have tried whole flock OTC, macrocodes, fluroquinolones without much success. You've nailed it that it is approaching tupping, not a time to be isolating animals. So if they are getting any hard feed (shouldn't be really with all this grass) then scatter it rather than trough feed and remove any, "tubbies" (they are a con anyway). Stop them using stuff in the eyes (and run an "Effective use of your money on medicines course") I also think palpebral injection is of doubtful efficacy. I check some references for you. Michael's right, some pictures would be good and I'll check the lab work the temperature is little high, so one option would be to take all the Temps and swab the eyes of the ones with high T (plastic swab only).

Iain

RE: Unresponsive sheep eye lesions

Michael Woodhouse — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 22:41:27 GMT

Pictures would be great. I'll have a look in some sheep books tomorrow and see if I can find anything.

I agree chlamydia should be very sensitive to oxytet. Macrolides maybe better for mycoplasma (better response to tylosin?). I have dealt with a few mycoplasma outbreaks causing mainly ocular signs in sheep, but epiphora has been a very consistent finding. They were pyrexic and mycoplasma positive on DGGE at the AHPA (forget which mycoplasma, and I realise there are doubts over the usefulness of the test).

My understanding was sheep were the reservoir for MCF - I've never heard of it causing clinical disease in sheep. Corneal oedema (very blue) eyes seem pretty consistent in cattle.

Some of these eye issues back me into a corner and you end up group treating (which we are trying very hard to avoid) - my mycoplasma batches we had to go through with parenteral tilmicosin.

Eyes are eyes Robert Lowe

Not been much help there.