Major causes of lamb mortality at Ebinat woreda, Amhara National Regional State, North-western

A year-round (from September 2008 to August 2009) study was conducted to in-vestigate causes of lamb mortality at Ebinat woreda, Amhara National Regional State, northwestern Ethiopia. Two hundred and forty one lambs under the age of six months were exploited for analysis of this study. Out of the 241 lambs ob-served, 96 were found dead giving the overall mortality of 40.0 % (96/241). Most of the mortalities were due to diarrhea 49 (51.0%), pneumonia 37 (38.5%) and others 10 (10.4%). Result of this study showed that there was a significant variation (2 = 3.847; df = 1; P = 0.050) in mortality between the two sexes. Season as a vari-able had a significant (2 = 9.963; df = 1; P = 0.002) influence on lamb mortality. Our study indicated that there was a strong association (2 = 40.432; df = 3; P = 0.000) between body condition scoring and mortality of lambs. There was sig-nificant variation (t = 27.61; df = 75; P=0.00) in birth weight between single-born lambs and multiples. Sex and dam parity, as factors, had shown no specialized fea-tures against specific variation seen on birth type basis. Result of faecal egg count