12/02/2025
Why a farm-call ultrasound with your vet is worth it this season:
✅ Get reliable pregnancy checks early. Portable ultrasound allows trans-abdominal scanning (no sedation and minimal handling) of goats/sheep with ~98 % accuracy.
🔢 Know how many babies — and plan accordingly. Ultrasound can give you litter size and gestational age (ideal window: ~40–60 days post-breeding).
💪 Optimize nutrition & management. With pregnancy status, stage, and number of kids/lambs known, you can separate animals by need — avoid wasting feed on OPEN does/ewes, make quick decisions on re-breeding if females are confirmed not pregnant and give multiples tailored nutrition for a healthy pregnancy and kidding/lambing.
🩺 Excellent time for your herd/flock wellness. If the vet is already out scanning — it’s a perfect opportunity to do semi-annual wellness: body-condition scoring, hoof check, nutritional review, parasite monitoring, general physical exams.
👉 In short: scheduling a vet visit for ultrasounds around 6–9 weeks after breeding is a smart, low-stress, high-value investment — optimizing animal health, farm efficiency, and your peace of mind.
Ultrasound offers an accurate way to manage small ruminant reproduction from the detection of pregnancy to more advanced determination of gestational age or litter size, allowing the producer to optimize resources and improve health of the flock/herd.
