Farmers encouraged to get involved in vet-led ewe vaginal prolapse study
23rd June 2025
Two experienced sheep vets are launching a new project to find out more about how farmers manage and treat vaginal prolapse when it occurs in their lambing ewes.
They are hoping to discover more about this issue, which is often managed on-farm without veterinary intervention.
Sharminda Lockwood, a vet at Westpoint Farm Vets in Ashford, Kent, part of UK veterinary group VetPartners, is leading the study.
Mrs Lockwood, who is also a sheep farmer herself, said: “It is important to better understand how farmers are currently managing this condition on their farms, so that we can develop advice on how to improve practice and protect the welfare of ewes affected by this condition.
“These insights will help everyone working with sheep in improving and protecting the welfare of ewes affected by this condition.”
Mrs Lockwood is part of a knowledge-sharing sheep clinical interest group which includes 100 fellow farm vets from across the VetPartners group, along with Georgina Rigby from Cross Counties Farm Vets in the East Midlands.
Mrs Rigby, who is also part of the study team explained the role of farmers in this study: “We hope farmers will embrace this opportunity to help us collect the information we need to get meaningful results that in future will assist vets and farmers to better manage this condition on farms and achieve the best outcome.
Mrs Rigby, who is on the committee for the Sheep Veterinary Society, continued: “The survey, which is anonymous, asks for general information about your flock and some more in-depth details about how cases of vaginal prolapse have been treated this year.”
How to take part
The VetPartners vaginal prolapse in ewes study is open to any farmer or smallholder lambing ewes in the UK in the most recent season (2024-5) and will take around 10 minutes to complete.
The survey has been developed with help from the VetPartners Clinical Board Support Team and has been ethically reviewed by the RCVS.
Once the results are analysed, they will be shared widely so that farmers can learn how others manage this condition and will be repeated in the future to provide future benchmarking opportunities.
The survey can be accessed via the link here and closes on 1st August.
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