The importance of recognising the cause of lamb death and adjusting the flock accordingly has been highlighted by an industry professional on a mission to bring the national mortality average down.
Hosting workshops across SA in conjunction with Livestock SA, Talking Livestock's Deb Scammell has touched on the key signs to look for when dealing with lamb loss and what small changes can be made to bring lamb mortality down.
With a national mortality average ranging between 2 per cent and 11pc, Ms Scammell said she hoped highlighting areas of concern would lower this figure.
"When I think of a target, we're probably looking at around 3pc over a year and 2pc around lambing being good," she said.
"I encourage people to keep track of an annual death figure but also what they're losing over lambing.
"If they're significantly over 2pc, then they can at least focus on it and make a bit of a change."
Ms Scammell said as an industry, dystocia was the number one cause of lamb death and was categorised into three types.
"The first is when you've got brain edema present and when you cut them open they've got pure brain damage," she said.
"They basically would've got stuck and had brain damage during the birthing process. They might stand up, but they don't have a suckle reflex or any reason to try and get a drink.
"Dystocia B is when they've got no edema present but they've still got central nervous system damage - no fat has been metabolised and they've never breathed.
"In Dystocia C, you've still got the central nervous system damage but they have breathed and metabolised some fat so they've stood up and tried to get to their mum, but they've still got enough damage they haven't had the need to get a drink or realise they're trying to survive."
Ms Scammell said this reiterated the importance of producers learning how to autopsy their own animals and making changes on farm.
"Just by looking at the feet of your dead lamb for dirt, it shows they may have been just stillborn and never had a chance to survive," she said.
"Others will be dead but it's obvious they've walked or potentially had a drink.
"By doing the autopsy, you can see whether there's milk in their bellies, if there's signs of dystocia on the brain or even if they've breathed by looking at their lungs."
Ms Scammell said aiming for a four kilogram kilogram birthweight in twins and 5kg for singles was optimal for lamb survivability.
"A lot of people will say 'we've had all these big healthy lambs and the ewe has walked away, the mums are useless', and they'll go through and start culling out mums," she said.
"But overfeeding fat ewes causes birthing issues and these big healthy lambs actually have brain damage and the mum walks off because they know more than us.
"It's nature.
On the other hand, if you don't get them heavy enough, they won't survive the cold temperatures overnight."
READ MORE:
Ms Scammell said feeding ewes to get lambs to a precise birth weight was a simple tactic to keep most of them alive.
"As an industry, we aim for 70pc survival in twin bearing mobs, which should give you sort of 140pc marking," she said.
"But there's some who probably only mark 120pc in twins - they're losing 80 lambs per 100 ewes, which is significant.
"We talk so much about condition score, but it really does come back that.
"Hitting the targets for twins and singles, but also not having a range of condition scores is key.
"Mineral nutrition is a big factor, so getting your calcium and magnesium right so the ewe can keep muscles functioning and have a successful, quick birth.
"A lot of the brain damage we see in twins that we autopsy potentially results from difficult births, and that can also come down to energy and mineral nutrition during pregnancy."
Although dystocia is the number one cause of lamb death, Ms Scammell said mismothering could still be at play in a flock.
"If it is mismothering, there's a lot of things you can do with mob size or paddock size, and pasture feed on offer if there's not enough feed on offer at lambing," she said.
"There are ways we can replicate it without causing mismothering with appropriate supplementation and enough feeding stations and then look at tactics to avoid that in future.
"Culling on maternal behaviour can help, but often it's practical or environmental issues that cause mismothering."