State Agricultural Society. 569 



the hog's leg. At the inside extremity is a pouch, apparently formed by 

 a continuation of the outside skin, being lined with hair, and seereting a 

 viscid. Sheep may also have what is called the 



BLIND STAGGERS — 



Refusing to eat, and turning continually around, or staggering. Some 

 become totally blind. I do not know of any remedy that is of any ac- 

 count. Either old sheep or lambs will occasionally have the 



SCOURS, 



Or diarrhea. For this give plenty of salt, and change to dry feed. 



With the exception of the few remedies mentioned above, 1 have but 

 one cure for any sheep that did not thrive on good grass, water, and 

 salt, and that is: to eat it the first time it did get fat, or to sell it very 

 cheap to any one who wanted to take the chances with it. For, though 

 I have had "good luck" always with flocks of sheep, still, with 

 single sick sheep it has been just the other way. I should always single 

 out or mark for the butcher any sheep that is continually poor or un- 

 thrifty in a flock of the same age and grade as itself, no matter how fine 

 it might be in other respects. Perfections and imperfections are trans- 

 mitted to offspring about equally, and in breeding from such sheep you 

 are continually with a lot of the same sort on your hands. 



INJURIOUS FEED-GROWTHS. 



There are very few grasses or vegetables in California that are inju- 

 rious to sheep — the only two that I have known to kill them being the 

 laurel and the "rattle-weed." Sheep will only touch the former during 

 a scarcity of feed. They will eat the rattle-weed freely, and the only 

 remedy I know is that of exterminating it from the range. 



IN CONCLUSION. 



The standard manuals of sheep husbandry give a good deal of space 

 to sheep diseases, their sj'mptoms, nature, and remedies, and may be 

 consulted by such as are curious. I can only reiterate my opinion, based 

 on the experience of having gone through the mill, that the foregoing 

 simple directions are all that can be followed with real profit by the 

 California sheep man who is in the business for " wool, mutton, and 

 money." Breeders of thoroughbred stock may find it worth while 

 to experiment with greater pains, especially to save some single animal 

 of considerable value. But all the circumstances that usually attend 

 the breeding of thoroughbreds are different from those of the ordinary 

 sheep raiser or farmer. Feed and shelter are different; and the value of 

 the animal on which the extra pains and expense may be expended is 

 very different indeed. I commend these considerations to the inex- 

 perienced sheep man who may have imbibed other and more ambitious 

 views from perusal of the manuals of sheep husbandry — valuable and 

 scientific as these are. He is to remember that nine tenths of their 

 matter is addressed, not to him at all, but only to the breeder of thor- 

 oughbreds, and will "pay" in practical application only with their val- 

 uable, high-priced animals. 



72— (agri) 



