What scald is doing, and why wet ground is the trigger
Scald is an inflammation of the skin between a sheep's claws. The skin there stays soft and protected while conditions are dry, but prolonged wet grazing, muddy gateways, and long wet grass keep it damp until it breaks down, and bacteria that live harmlessly on the pasture then get into the damaged skin. The sheep goes lame — often several sheep in the flock within days of each other — and the raw skin between the claws is an open door for more serious foot infections. That is why the routine below is built around one principle: treat the skin, then give it the chance to dry and harden, because bathing without drying achieves almost nothing.
Step one: gather calmly and inspect every foot
Bring the flock into a race, pen, or handling system where you can catch and turn sheep without a chase; stressed sheep and a rushed shepherd both miss feet. Pick up each foot as the sheep comes to hand and look between the claws first: early scald shows as pink, moist, slightly raw skin, sometimes with a greyish film, before any horn damage appears. Check all four feet even on a sound sheep during an outbreak — the point of a routine is catching the foot that is two days behind the lame one. Feel for heat and note any foot that smells foul or is swollen, as those have moved past simple scald.
Step two: trim only what blocks the bath
Overgrown horn folds over the skin between the claws and shelters it from the footbath entirely, so trim back loose, flaky, overgrown wall horn until the interdigital skin is exposed. Be conservative: cut only dead and detached horn, in small pieces, and stop well short of making the foot bleed — a bleeding foot in a communal bath is a problem you have created. Sheep whose feet need genuinely corrective trimming, or who flinch hard and are clearly in pain, should be marked and dealt with separately rather than holding up the race.
Step three: bathe, then stand them somewhere dry
Walk the sheep through the footbath slowly enough that every foot goes in — a rushed flock hops and splashes and half the feet stay dry. For sheep already showing scald, standing them in the bath for a few minutes reaches the skin better than a walk-through. Whatever solution the bath holds, mix and use it strictly to its label directions. Then comes the step that decides whether the whole morning worked: move the sheep onto a clean, dry, hard standing — a concrete yard, a dry barn — and leave them there until their feet are properly dry. Turning freshly bathed sheep straight onto wet pasture rinses the treatment off and returns softened skin to exactly the conditions that caused the problem.
Step four: grazing, repetition, and the repeat offenders
After bathing, put the flock on the driest grazing available, and think about the wet places they cross daily — a poached gateway or a permanently muddy trough surround keeps reseeding the problem, so hardcore, drainage, or moving the trough may matter more than the bath itself. During a wet spell, repeat the routine at intervals before lameness reappears rather than waiting for the next wave of limping sheep. Mark and record any sheep treated twice in a season: repeat offenders carry the flock's problem feet, and their notes inform culling and breeding decisions later. Lameness that does not improve after the routine, or feet that are hot, swollen, and foul, are beyond bathing — get the vet to those animals. Held as a recurring duty on the flock's profile in KinsLe, Care Teams can pair the bathing steps with the treated-sheep list, so the season's repeat cases are visible at a glance instead of scattered across memory.