Naturally occurring pregnancy toxaemia in the ewe and treatment with recombinant bovine somatotropin

Abstract

The control group (17 ewes) received daily i.v. injections of glucose and twice daily propylene glycol orally. Severely affected animals received glucose twice daily. The treated group (17 ewes) received the same therapy plus a daily injection of recombinant bovine somatotropin (rbST) at 0.15 mg kg −1 BW (Somidobove, Elanco). Four ewes died within 24 h of start for unrelated reasons. Overall survival rate of ewes with pregnancy toxaemia was high, possibly owing to positive stockmanship. The overall lack of difference between the two groups showed that rbST injections had no obvious detrimental effect on ewes with clinical pregnancy toxaemia when also treated with propylene glycol and i.v. glucose injections. Eleven treated (65% overall, 73% of those alive after 24h) and 12 control ewes (71% overall, 80% of those alive after 24 h) survived. The control group produced 16 live and 14 dead lambs whereas the treated group produced 20 live and 8 dead lambs ( P ≤ 0.25). All live lambs survived. All but one ewe death occurred after lambing, ewes in the treatment group tending to succumb later than controls (5.7 ± 1.53 days vs.2.7 ± 2.08 days after lambing) but the difference was not significant from complications of lambing and metritis. The duration of therapy for pregnancy toxaemia tended to be shorter in those also receiving rbST than in the control group (6.5 ± 2.02 days vs. 7.8 ± 1.47 days). The rbST treatment had no significant effect on blood plasma levels of glucose, β-hydroxybutyrate, urea, total protein, aspartate aminotransferase or creatine phosphokinase. The high overall survival made it difficult to observe clear treatment effects, although somatotropin had no detrimental effect on the ewes, and numbers of live lambs were greater in the treated group. It is possible that rbST might be a suitable treatment for pregnancy toxaemia in sheep.