Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Baa's and Bleat's - The AASRP Podcast
Neonatal Knowledge with Dr. Michelle Kutzler
Join us for a discussion about practical assessments and interventions for newborn small ruminants with Dr. Michelle Kutzler of Oregon State University.
In this episode we review Apgar scoring as an assessment tool for newborn lambs and their need for intervention after birth as well as a technique for assisting lambs that struggle with the transition of birth called the Madigan Squeeze. This technique was popularized in horses but has also been used in cattle.
Developing a modified Apgar scoring system for newborn lambs:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32827990/
Resuscitation compression for newborn sheep:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33358064/
Dr. Kutzler's work is funded, in part, by the Oregon Sheep Commission:
https://oregonsheepcommission.com/
Learn more about Dr. Michelle Kutzler and her work:
https://anrs.oregonstate.edu/users/michelle-kutzler
If your company or organization would like to sponsor an episode or if you have questions about today's show, email Office@AASRP.org
Hello, and welcome back to Baas and Bleeds. Today we are talking to Dr. Michelle Kutzler, who is a professor at Oregon State University. Dr. Kutzler and I have sat on the board of directors for the AASRP together for the last few years, and she is currently the treasurer of our organization. It's great to see you, Dr. Kutzler. Thanks for chatting with us.
Michelle:Oh, thank you so much, Sarah. It's been my pleasure. I have been waiting for an opportunity to speak on your podcast. I feel like I'm one of the precious few people who've had the honor.
Sarah:Well, I don't know about that, but it worked out really well, actually. So I always love hearing everybody's history, kind of like where you where you went to school, how you got here. Just kind of give us a little background about yourself before we jump into the papers.
Michelle:For sure. So I'm originally from Washington State. So I grew up on a hobby farm in West Seattle, Washington, and went to veterinary school at Washington State University. We didn't have any small ruminants growing up, but since I uh became a veterinarian, I have had lots of camelids and still have llamas and alpacas now and have served on a number of national organizations for llamas and alpacas over the years. So again, not necessarily associated with our topic of today, but I have been a longtime uh small room in it owner, at least for over 20 years.
Sarah:Awesome, awesome. And so Dr. Cutler teaches and does research primarily in the field of theorigenology, which is the fancy word of saying reproduction, but also does a fair amount of advising, both undergrads and graduates. So you have your own animals, but you do a lot at Oregon State with animals. But you do not work in a vet school, correct? It's right.
Michelle:So I work in the I when I started at Oregon State, I worked in the College of Veterinary Medicine. I worked there for eight years, and I've been in the College of Agricultural Sciences since 2010. And I teach predominantly reproduction classes, an equine reproduction class, calving school. I teach the reproduction sections of our sheep and goat production class and our beef production class and a companion animal production class. And you know, you you're getting the idea that there's a common theme here with reproduction.
Sarah:Nice.
Michelle:Yep. So I I mean I grew up on the the west side of the mountains where there's no veterinary school, but but my my heart was always to become a veterinarian. So I lived in Pullman for seven years while I was in veterinary school and undergrad.
Sarah:Nice, awesome. All right, so let's jump in. Today we're actually going to be talking about two different papers that Dr. Kutzler was involved with and published. The first one was published in 2020, and it's entitled Developing a Modified Apgar Score System for Newborn Lambs. The second paper was published in 2021, and it is titled Resuscitation Compression for Newborn Sheep. I'm going to try not to jump between the two papers, even though I know I'm going to want to and just do one at a time. So can you give us a little bit of background? We were kind of talking about this before we started recording, but kind of how these papers came about and like what was your ideas that kind of first got you going. And I know you were working with a graduate student on this at the time. So you want to just give us a little background?
Michelle:Yeah, absolutely. So the the uh I would say brainchild of this project is actually Dr. Tasma Flores. She's now a practicing veterinarian in Oregon, but she came to me with uh a question about using the Madigan squeeze technique on lambs. So the, and here we are jumping between papers like we said we weren't going to, but this is a method of inducing a sleep-like state and a newborn animal to overcome some of the neurohormone suppression that happens and and increase their their viability afterwards. So so Dr. Flora was very interested in this topic. And since it hadn't been done in sheep, I was supportive and I and I would be remiss if I didn't make a shout-out to the Oregon Sheep Commission, because nobody can do any research, no matter how big or small, without some funding. And the Oregon Sheep Commission is the one who provided us with the funding for this, and also our our co-author on the paper, Mary Smallman, she was the uh the sheep manager at the time. And and you know, there's a lot of samples that have to be collected, data points in the middle of the night when lambs are being born, and so we couldn't have done it without her help too. But getting back to kind of the project, so in order for us to test this this this method, to see if this method would work in in sheep, we needed to first establish some some normals. And that led us to our our first paper is developing a modified apgar score for lambs. And I I am gonna guess that most of the audience has heard of apgar scoring before. Apgar is an acronym, it stands for appearance, pulse, grimace, attitude, and respiration. And those terms make a lot of sense when you think about it used for humans, but we had to modify like the grimace response, you know, for animals so that it fits in. Fun fact, the we use the APGA as kind of an acronym, but APAR was actually named from Virginia Apgar, who was a uh human OBGYN nurse, and wanted to again measure some of these viability parameters in newborn humans. And so we think of it as being an acronym for Apgar, but it actually came from her last name, Apgar.
Sarah:That was so fascinating. It actually says she's a human OB anesthesiologist.
Michelle:Oh, there you go. Sorry, thank you. Thank you for cracking.
Sarah:Yeah, that was fascinating to know. I mean, there, I mean, I'm sure maybe if you haven't had a baby or you're not a grandma or an aunt, you may not have heard of Apgar. I hadn't heard of it until I had kids. But yeah, so it's kind of for those of you who aren't familiar, like the second a baby is born, they get an Apgar score. They look at, like Michelle, Dr. Ketzer said, appearance, pulse, grimace, attitude, attitude, and respiration. And baby, like my my daughter was born with a very bad Avgar score, but then they keep doing it every few minutes, and I mean she was fine, hers came up quickly, but it's a way to like instantly kind of tell if if these babies need more help, which would be awesome for our animal species.
Michelle:Yeah, and and what they've they've shown, so this this of course holds true with with humans, but in other species where apgar scoring has been done, so horses, cows, swine, and dogs, they found that low apgar scores are highly correlated with higher neonodle mortality. Uh, and so as a veterinarian, you know, anything that we can do to prevent mortality, we're all for. And and and for our clients, anything they can do to prevent mortality, they're all for too. Now, often we as veterinarians maybe aren't there when the offspring are born, or maybe our producers aren't even there when they're born. So being able to do that initial assessment might not be possible, but one of the things that we, and I feel like I'm jumping around, but one of the things that we did with our test is we looked at it uh at um at within five minutes of birth. So that's kind of similar to what they do with people. And then we did it at at 15 minutes, which like with people, they usually do it, like you said, every about f every five minutes until they have a like a normal score. But then we also did it at one hour because we're like, well, what's more realistic? You know, if if if if you know you're gonna be there every five minutes looking for uh uh lamb apgar scores, and we found that there was no difference in apgar score between like no significant difference between those time points. So you can still get really really meaningful. So that that lamb that has a bad apgar score at 60 minutes, it you know, had a bad apgar score at birth, but also that lamb that had a good apgar score at 60 minutes, it had a good apgar score at birth as well.
Sarah:I feel like a baby that's born and looks horrible and then the mom licks it and stimulates it, like that should up their apgar score, but you're saying no, they're pretty similar.
Michelle:Well, so all of our lambs were were kept with their mom, so they what once we knew they were lambing, we we kind of isolated them into a a pen. With we have these, uh I'm sure a lot of producers have these too, but these kind of like uh temporary wood fences, they're kind of like they're on a hinge and they're you know, so that you can make them into an L or lay them flat. And and then that way if the U is you know laying in one area, we could just kind of like move this fence around her and we don't have to move her at all. She's still in like her safe environment, but we can keep you know her and her lambs in an area where some other U is not gonna try to get in there and like you know, take a lamb or or you just get up get up all up in her business. Um and and so the lambs that all all of the lambs were cared for by their mothers in exactly the same way as what I'm trying to say. So there wasn't any we didn't try to deprive any like maternal stimulation or or increase any sort of maternal stimulation either.
Sarah:Okay, okay. And I feel like as I was reading this, I was kind of like, you know, so say as a vet you're there helping, assisting in birth. You know, we all kind of do this in the back of our mind, right? You're like, oh, take a piece of straw and stimulate the respiration. That one's not breathing enough, you know. I put your hand on the chest, how's the heart rate? You know, I feel like we kind of probably do this sort of in our minds, but I think having numbers next to anything is always super important, right? Like knowing exactly like where a pulse is, where a respiration is. I mean, it's just you know better for the whole situation, even though I'm like, yeah, I kind of do that. I I have a feeling for that.
Michelle:So you so you mentioned like using you know straw in the nostril to kind of stimulate a respiration. So that was one of the modifications that we did for the grimace response. And so in you know, for and I should probably take a step back, you know, regardless of the apgar scoring method and the species is used, there are three essentially like categories under each of the criteria, and the categories are either zero, one, or two points. Uh and since there are five criteria, there's a the highest apgar score is a ten. And of course the lowest apgar score would be zero. But but lambs that didn't have you know any response at all to straw up the nose. And I I'm sure if you've delivered enough lambs, you've probably seen some that that don't, you know, they're just kind of hanging there with their tongue and fluid running out of their mouth and and don't do anything. And then some that just maybe you know barely shook their head, but then didn't like try to sneeze or you know, do anything else, then that would have been a score of one. So so we we came up with these parameters by observing lots of lambs ahead of time. And then once we set the criteria, then that's how we did the scoring after that.
Sarah:Okay, so just give us a little brief kind of what you looked at to score each thing. So like in in the table one of the paper, if when you guys read it, you'll see this. But if you just want to kind of give us a brief little for appearance, we were looking at this kind of.
Michelle:Yeah, exactly. So so appearance, we're using mucous membrane color, and and so I mean we we we typically use gums, and of course, it's a little bit, you know, if you've got a you know, dark-faced animal, sometimes their gums you know kind of look a little bit more muddy, so you have to know what what you know normal like appearance would look like. But you we you know pink would be a score of two, that's what you desire. And if it's like really muddy or what we call here cyanotic, then that would have been a score of zero. And then somewhere between that pink and cyanotic, we call just pale, would have been a score of one. Uh for P, that's actually pulse. So we just measured pulse, and again, we had to determine what what we were going to call normal because there is a pretty wide variation in the literature what a normal pulse is for a newborn lamb. And so again, we just took data from our own animals to make a normal range, and we determined that if it was less than a hundred, that that was going to be a score of zero. And of course, you know, we had some that were much lower than a hundred. And if it was greater than a hundred and seventy five, then that was going to be a score of two. And then between a hundred and a hundred and seventy-five, that's a score of one. I already mentioned grimace, that was the straw-nose attitude. This is a response to croup or low you know loin stimulation. So this would again be like the mother, you know, nuzzling the the back or or or pawing the back or doing something to stimulate the the lamb to you know rise or move. And if there was no response, they got zero. If they if they try to stand, that was two. But if they just kind of you know made a a not a great effort, then that was a score of one. And the last one, R, is resp is respiration. And and some Mount Abgar scores, they actually measure the number of breaths per minute. But in our study, we used a pulse oximeter right on the lamb's ear in order to get an idea of what the oxygen saturation was. So we felt that that was a a more reliable way to measure respiration. And so for lambs with an oxygen saturation of less than 45%, that was zero. That's obviously pretty desaturated. And then if it was over 65%, then we call that two, and then between 45 and 65 is is a one. And I know I'm just jumping forward between papers and he said we weren't going to do that, but when we did the neonatal compression test, we we weren't looking necessarily for lambs that had apgar scores of 10 or even 8. We used uh three and a half as a and there were a lot of lambs that had an apgar score of less than 3.5. So it seems like, you know, oh, there all should be tens or eights or something, but but that you know that that's not what we found in and using these criteria.
Sarah:Interesting. Yeah, I found that interesting. I just want to back up just a little bit. So they literally use those those oxygen saturation things that like people use in the hospital, the finger ones that you just pinched, that now when you take your kids to the doctor, that they put on them and old people and everywhere. So those are super easy to come by. As you know, field veterinarian, something like that is super exciting for me as one more tool that I can add to my tool chest to help monitor not even just layons, like animals in respiratory distress, just in general. I mean, I don't know what I'd do if it was low. It's not like I carry oxygen, but it would be good to know.
Michelle:But you could use it as a response to treatment, though. I mean, and that's you know what we're what we're looking at is if they had a you know low oxygen saturation, how are they responding now to our resuscitation efforts?
Sarah:Right, right, right. So, all right, so what else? What else is in this paper? I mean, it's just it's just a lot of talking about that and like realizing that you know, maybe a lot of our lambs need help, you know, a lot more than we think, and maybe we could save a lot more than we normally do. Do you I assume all these moms and everything like have good nutrition, you know, had a good, you know, like they are like normal, healthy, not parasitized use.
Michelle:Um I mean we do our best. I think that to find a flock of sheep that has no parasites is uh is a a unigorn, but right you know, definitely you know, we keep our especially our late gestacean use in the barn actually during the winter because it's it's quite wet in Western Oregon and there's a greater risk that they can you know succumb to some other problems being you know out in the mud all the time. But then of course there's trade-offs because if they're in the barn, then you know there's perhaps increased risk for you know parasitism because they you know they're you're all in the barn. But so but they were all of the use, they were all polypay us and they were all you know managed the same way. This all took place over one season. So this wasn't uh like a combination of you know multiple years of of data at all.
Sarah:Do you have any, and I know this is an out-of-the-blue question, do you have any idea for this flock what their normal percent of loss is?
Michelle:So our our I I don't remember off the top of my head, I know that we did look it up, but we actually have a very low loss rate. I think we're currently doing a a pregnancy toxemia study right now. And last year, out of you know, over a hundred ewes that we had lamb, we only had you know one you that actually was down with pregnancy toxemia. So we're I uh you know part of it, the benefit is that it's you know a teaching institution, so we have a lot of student labor that can catch animals you know quickly. And and you know, we keep our our our late later gestation animals indoors so we we you know have eyeballs on them better. But our our you know, we have we have hot boxes for you know any lambs that are that are cold and well lots of frozen colostrum. So we we rare we really rarely lose lambs because we get really aggressive at you know keeping them keeping them alive.
Sarah:Okay, okay. Just curious, you know, because there are some flocks that like probably a large portion of them have bad outdoors.
Michelle:Yeah, right. Well, and here in the Willamette Valley, the grass seed capital of the world, I should say, there are a lot of sheep that run on on grass seed pastures and are lambing, you know, outside during the winter, you know, when it's you know raining horizontally for days on end, and and the lambs, you know, they survive.
Sarah:Okay, so what else before we move on to the really fun paper, okay take away from this one?
Michelle:Yeah, so I had I had mentioned before that that when we looked at the the apgar scores over time, that when we compared um singletons at those three time points, five minutes, fifteen minutes, and an hour, and and twins, there was no difference. We did see a slight uh improvement in apgar scores in in triplets, and you know, uh one could could argue that that last lamb being born, you know, may have more hypoxemia because of its place in the birth order. But we we compared the length of delivery and we did that for twins and triplets and then twins and triplets combined, where the average, like you know. length between lambs for twins was about twenty-six minutes. I'm reading here in the paper and then and you know fifteen minutes for triplets. I found that there was no effect on delivery interval. So I mean the idea that you maybe they have you know longer interval and that was causing it. So that didn't that was did not make an effect. There was also no significant difference between birth order at least with respect to twin lamb. So first and second. But um one of the things that was of interest is that there was an effect of sex. And so even though there wasn't a difference in birth weight so birth weight itself didn't correlate with Apgar score for females they tended to have a higher attitude all right that's the that's the rump stimulation compared to other compared to males or compared to the other categories. So so there was an effect or a difference that we saw with females. And we also saw that that females in I mean in our group of animals had a tendency to stand faster than males. And and that's kind of interesting too because I don't think that we you know pay a lot of attention to that if they're all market lambs it doesn't really matter if they're you know a ram lamb or a Ulam but you know if you you might want to not discount those little ram lambs if they're not standing up right away they might need some intervention because it you know there could be a problem.
Sarah:All right those are very interesting.
Michelle:Were any of them assisted births yeah so that that included the ones that were assisted and I I can't remember how many that there were but there really weren't that many that that that had that other than just you know some like gentle guidance it wasn't a dystopia that required a a veterinary and we didn't include any animals like that.
Sarah:Okay. Okay good to know.
Michelle:So I mean I just wanted like like one like kind of concluding thing about apgar uh scoring is that if you if you don't measure it we won't know right I mean that's the the thing so and and it's really easy to train your producers you know how to do this apgar scoring. And if they find that the lamb has a low apgar score then then you know hopefully they can like put that little piece of information away and and provide you know maybe additional colostrum to that one or additional like you know warmth you know some additional support to keep that lamb from dying because again there's a strong correlation with low apgar scores and neonatal mortality so rather than just coming back and finding that you know one of the three lambs dead and say well you know what was I gonna do with that third lamb anyway you know you could so you could keep that lamb alive and then have to figure out what you're gonna do with that third lamb.
Sarah:Right. She worked hard to grow that baby all right well that that yeah I love that paper. I I think it's very applicable which is what we're going for here. Okay so we're gonna move on to the second paper. So many of you in the vet community um will have heard about um what's called the Madigan squeeze which is named after the veterinarian that kind of invented it. I know I see it I was telling Michelle mentioned all over the vet to vet groups talking about it primarily in fulls and calves. So I was very fascinated. I guess it hadn't even crossed my mind to apply it to small ruminants and now that I will be abgard scoring every baby that I see I will be have my little rope ready. And so the Avgar score was like because you wanted to do this but you needed a way to measure so that that makes sense. So I think you've already given us a good background of kind of how this came about. So let's just kind of jump into the materials and methods and and you know how this went and yeah it's a really fascinating paper. So go ahead.
Michelle:Sure. So I know that we probably messed some people up when we called it resuscitation compression because I I think a lot of people know it as a manicin squeeze or a a neonatal squeeze. But those terms were really I I didn't feel particularly helpful. And you know what we what we were looking for was a way to you know resuscitate these low apgar limp lambs and we were doing it by compression. So that's why we we are are trying to coin this term resuscitation compression instead of like the you know the Madigan squeeze. But it is essentially the same the same thing. And I don't know whether it's necessary to to take a step back but what happens when the animal is squeezed particularly around their thorax is it induces a release of a an excitatory neurohormones. So during the in utero period neurohormones are suppressed so that the fetus isn't moving around so much. I mean of course if you were to do an ultrasound you'd probably see the fetus move but but you don't want it to be kicking and flailing especially during the delivery process. You want it to remain as motionless as as possible and and that squeezing that's happening in the uterine body vagina as the animal is being born that is essentially what we are mimicking that thoracic squeeze with these with these ropes and and again this this method of neonatal resuscitation compression was first you know very well demonstrated in foals and we we we kind of you know collectively call these dummy foals because they are are typically non-responsive they don't they have don't have a suckle reflex they may not be able to walk around they may just stand with a sawhorse stance staring at the wall as though they're they're blind and if they have the squeeze technique done then they now completely wake up and are moving around without any impairment and finding the other in nursing so it's just incredible if you have an opportunity to watch one of these YouTube videos with foals because it it it's it's so effective it you just don't believe your eyes that that this could actually be happening. Well this technique has been done before in cattle as well and so we thought well why not in sheep and again like I said the brain the real brains behind this was Dr. Tasman Flora who just graduated from Oregon State University veterinary school this year in 2024. So in this project we had three main groups we had the control group which we didn't do anything with so we I mean we still like measured the apgar score and we recorded the time to stand and the time to suckle but we didn't apply any sort of compressions or touch by us at all. That was our our control group we had a placebo group where we put the ropes on but we did not tighten the ropes. So that way they still had the ropes on them if it was just some sort of like just a pressure point thing that would have worked out in the the like the placebo group. And then for the actual treatment group we applied the ropes and then we we had a little weight that you can determine how much pressure or force you're putting on so we identified that about one pound of pressure applied to the ropes was sufficient. I mean we obviously don't want to break the ribs you know crush their chest and all they just have to breathe while this is happening but we wanted it to be of a sufficient force to to essentially induce sleep. And and that's exactly what happened. So in one of the videos you can see the lamb is standing we apply the ropes and and then start you know pulling back on the rope to apply some pressure some some force and the lamb just crumbles like it just like falls asleep. And we maintained that hold for five minutes. Now someone said why five minutes you know why not one minute or ten minutes so that was that was a little bit arbitrary but again wanting to be long enough that if we were going to see an effect that it should be there. And then at the end of five minutes we took off the ropes and usually the lamb was already starting to wake up and trying to run away as as the tension was coming off the ropes but if they were still laying down we would just scratch their wool over their rump and then they would jump up. And in these three different like groups we had lambs that had normal apgar scores. Again we set kind of a low apgar score threshold as being less than 3.5 out of 10. So so over 3.5 and then and then in that if you call them the normal lambs those are lambs that that stood and nursed without any sort of delay we had another group where they had a a normal apgar score so greater than 3.5 but had a delay in standing and nursing so they hadn't nursed yet. And again I think that this is you know maybe a lot of problems that that people might run into that the lamb is born everything seems fine but it just doesn't want to stand and nurse or or or you can hold it up but it won't suckle or you know so these are some of the problems. And then our last group was those that had a low apgar score less than 3.5 and also you know had a delay in standing and nursing and and the real exciting thing that we found is that for the animals that were normal to start off with so had an apgar score that was normal stood and nursed just fine there was no adverse effects of the treatment at all on them. So it didn't it didn't impair their ability to continue to thrive interfere with the the bond with the you at all for the ones that had a delay in standing and suckling with a normal apgar score or those that had a delay in standing and suckling and a normal apgar score we saw an an increase in the time it took for them or sorry a delay then say they're wrong that they stood and nursed faster. And really the the you know most exciting were were those lambs that either couldn't stay standing on their own or couldn't couldn't stand and and suckle on their own after the squeeze they were able to stand and suckle on their own. And and and that's you know that that that was huge. So again you get back to these situations where you know maybe a you lamb's out in the field and the lamb is you know dull well this is another technique that you can use to help revive it in order to get it to start suckling on its own.
Sarah:So I just for those of you who have never heard of a Madigan squeeze before it sounds like voodoo and it feels like voodoo. But it is amazing. You can definitely look it up on YouTube but I will in the podcast notes put the links to Michelle's videos that they made Dr. Kutzler's during the that are associated with this paper so you can kind of watch how they how they do it and how quickly they they respond. I'd like to joke with my clients that we're making the animals Christians because they're being born again because that's really like what it's like like you are almost like redoing their birthing process for them. So for those of you who've never heard of it I know this sounds like out of the blue craziness but it's definitely been circling around in the veterinary community for a while. I feel like people I talked to a lot of the horse owners more about it than other species. Like I think it's slowly trickling into the ruminant community but multiple people that I've talked to non-vets in the horse world had heard of it. So I think that's that's super interesting. But if you haven't seen it watch a video watch the one that's attached to this podcast. So sorry to interrupt you Michelle I just wanted to oh no no that's great said that we're not insane.
Michelle:Well and and and the rope that we use I mean it was just a soft cotton like one inch diameter rope and it just needs to be long enough in order to do those two essentially half hitches over the like the thoracic spine that's where the compression kind of is is is cinched down. I think I want to say ours was like seven or eight feet long but you know we bought it from just a local hardware store and it it you know wrapped right right up real easily into a Ziploc bag that we kept you know kept in the barn so it was you know really easy to like throw you know in on your like your lambing supply card or in you know in your in your truck if you have to and just to just to mention that you if you are using something like this for horses you're gonna need to scale down a little bit the size of the the rope for the lamb just because they're they're more um petite compared to a full do you think you can use baling twine you know we actually thought of that because you know what does everybody always have around is is baling twine. You need because you have to you know apply this like a a substantial amount of pressure I I think that I would worry that the baling twine might might I don't know cut in a little bit more rather than then apply the compression that we were thinking of but but maybe you could take three pieces of baling twine and braid them together and get the same you know get the same thing. But I think a single piece of baling twine would would not be as effective because of how it would kind of dig into the skin rather than you know stay on the top.
Sarah:Yeah yeah yeah okay what else what was significant?
Michelle:Well like as I as I mentioned before so after compression you know there was a reduction in the time to stand and and to suckle and and you know that's of course when it comes to uh lamb survivability if they can't stand and suckle then they're not gonna gonna survive or it's gonna be really labor intensive for the the owner. And and then I guess the other you know main thing was that let's say you're not sure whether this lamb needs to be squeezed or not. You know you you're not sure whether you know which one of the three of these lambs has has already stood and nursed we we found that there was no adverse effects of applying this technique to to normal lambs. So there's essentially no reason why not to do it if you have one that uh is slow to stand and suckle and and there's you know lots of reasons for for doing this.
Sarah:Yeah that's that's a good really good point. Yeah. Have you tried it on a camelid?
Michelle:Nope I haven't tried it on a camelid yet we you know I we don't have enough in my own farm to to you know have it be of any sort of meaningful study and and at our sheep center you know all we have are geldings for our you know for our guards. So and you know someone you know could ask well what about you know adult animals I mean you know certainly you know when you have pregnancy toxemia or something there are some mentation problems too you know would this be something that you could actually use on on older animals with impaired mental mentation to you know after you've like corrected their metabolic state they still have some lingering mentation problems. So that's a I think it's a great a great question. I just don't know the answer to that. But but again I there won't wouldn't be any any harm in trying if you were if you were out on the farm and and I think it's a lot more humane than than trying to you know get into them with a you know hot shot or something like that too when you know if they're have you know shocking that isn't gonna make them any better.
Sarah:I mean even you know before we start recording we were talking about how just like pressure like the weighted blankets and all of that the human world's realizing how calming it could be you know you think of the dogs with the thunder jackets now that are kind of a big thing. My thought would be what if we're like asking a very stressful thing of our pet of our small ruminants you know like you've never been to a show and you're sleeping at the show for the first night you know with some sort of little like weighted blanket some sort of little compression thing like help them be calmer and like happier you know and just not go off feed and like all the things like who knows like I think we're just tipping starting on the iceberg here.
Michelle:And and and for the Lamb project you know of course we want them to to fall asleep but we also want them to wake up right away uh so that that way they can you know get busy we want you to get up and we want you to start nursing and so you can have a little a little nappy poodle to shake off all of those residual neurohormones from delivery but but then we want you to get up.
Sarah:Right, right and one of the places that we take advantage of those neurohor hormones is when we do things to young animals like disbudding or you know stuff like that that might be painful. So they're good also.
Michelle:But yeah I wonder if you could swaddle lambs or kids and take advantage of the somnolescence that you get when you have to do a painful procedure like you know disbutting or tail docking or what have you that's a great idea have to have to do that one.
Sarah:I mean you could even start with something simple like giving a shot you know like something that's not as painful but is painful. Maybe while they're asleep they get their their selenium injections or whatever. Yeah. At least out here we do selenium injections.
Michelle:Yeah oh no we do in Oregon too for sure in fact Dr. Oldfield who our our one of our buildings is named after is we we call him Mr. Selenium because he did a lot of the the pioneering selenium research and livestock.
Sarah:Nice nice okay anything else like from this paper that that we're not we're not getting or that you feel like we skimmed over?
Michelle:No I I think that that that was it. Like I said you know I mean the you know the biggest take home messages is just really that it's that this is perfectly perfectly safe and if you misjudged you know who needed it and you you you did it to an animal that didn't need to to have this done it there was no harm. And then of course the the fact that you know it it it does wake those animals up and then they stay awake and continue to search and nurse which is is really a you know the main factor for you know survivability in these slams.
Sarah:Yeah awesome awesome so as always in the podcast notes I'll have where you can find these papers how you can ask Dr. Kutzler the million questions you're gonna have after you listen to this podcast. So my final question that I always like to ask what do you see as the next big problem that researchers need to think about and address in the small ruminant world?
Michelle:Oh that's a good one so you know we're right now we're doing a uh a vitamin uh D supplementation project in use in pregnant use in the Pacific Northwest we have many many gray days during the fall and winter and even though we don't really think of like vitamin D deficiencies In sheep that much. I mean, this of course is when we're ask asking them to be pregnant and deliver healthy lambs. And sure enough, the sheep in our area are vitamin D deficient. So we are currently doing a study looking at supplementing, just giving injections like at the time of ultrasound and then at the time of you know crutching essentially. So two time points during the winter, but uh when when ewes um would be already handled to see if this improves their their pregnancy performance, decreasing uh either pregnancy toxemia or increases the birth weight of lamb or their ability to care for the lamb. So we'll hopefully have some results from that this spring because we're we're starting this project on the yews that are being bred right now.
Sarah:Oh, that'll be interesting too. We also have no sunshine here in Buffalo. So that would be awesome. It's our nightly routine at our house. Everybody gets vitamin D before bed in the winter. And maybe I need to add the small ruminants in my life. Awesome. I look forward to that. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Kutzler, for joining us today on Voz and Bleats, the American Association of Small Ruminant Practitioners podcast. And we will see you next time. Thanks.
