The Madigan Squeeze for Unconscious Newborns

One of our farmers reported a successful result on a newborn 'unconscious' lamb using this interesting technique - The Madigan Squeeze. Originally devised as a technique for for Neonatal Maladjustment Syndrome in newborn foals, characterized by failure to stand, suck, and follow their dam. She reported:

“This is a second lamb born from a first timer. He (the lamb) never really got going, wouldn’t suck, wouldn’t really stand but he was alert and breathing fine.

I suggested we try the Madigan Squeeze because the lamb’s symptoms were very similar to a dummy foal/calf.

My husband looked up the technique on YouTube and after trussing the lamb up for 20 mins….

It got up and fed!

A great drug free solution. I reckon that’s a win!”

This article in Pubmed explains that Neonatal Maladjustment Syndrome is a disorder of the newborn lamb, calf or foal characterised by altered behaviour, low affinity for the dam, pooor awareness of the environment, failure to bond to the mother, abnormal sucking and other neurologically-based abnormalities.

Anecdotal evidence demonstrates that a novel physical compression, or squeeze, method that applies 20 minutes of sustained pressure to the thorax of some neonatal newborns with this synome might rapidly hasten recovery. Results revealed that the squeeze procedure, when applied for 20 minutes, resulted in a faster full recovery of some foals diagnosed with NMS.

The article written by Aleman, Weich and Madigan highlights that the adjunctive use of a non-invasive squeeze method may improve animal welfare by hastening recovery and newborn-dam interactions that minimise health problems. This would also avoid or reduce costs arising from hospitalisation associated with veterinary and nursing care that sometimes leads owners or farmers to elect for euthaniasia.

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