July 2, 1920.] Agricultural Gazette of N.S.W. 517 



The feeding boxes should be detachable or be provided with plugs so that 

 they can be thoroughly washed and disinfected. Contagion can occur if 

 different cows use the same feeding boxes and they are not cleaned out. 



Moreover, souring food has a bad effect on a cow's appetite. 



Calf-pens. 



It is usual to provide some small shelter for the calves when feeding, and 

 to have a small yard attached thereto. Calf-pens are responsible, more 

 than any other buildings, for the spread of disease. The flooring, both of the 

 shed and yard, should be of concrete, sloping gently to allow of washing down,, 

 and should be kept clean. Whether the calves are fed from buckets or 

 troughs these should be frequently scalded, and the woodwork of the 

 miniature bails, if such are used, should be disinfected regularly. The 

 diseases which calves contract through dirty pens and yards are navel-ilJ, 

 diarrhoea, dysen^ory, white scour, pneumonia and ringworm ; the only way in 

 which to prevent infection from these sources is to provide places such as can 

 be kept scrupulously clean. Objectionable features often seen in calf -pens are 

 saturation of the earth floor with f feces and urine, and the caking of the 

 wooden trough with drjnng and souring skim milk and other food ; the first 

 condition encourages the introduction of the organisms of disease through the 

 navel of newly-boi-n calves, and both conditions tend to infection by way of 

 the digestive tract. Fences, again, are often seen soiled with fseces showing 

 evident signs of dj'sentery and white scour. Shelter is generally absent, so 

 that the calves shiver in the cold and bake in the heat. Barring the pig, no 

 animal is kept under such bad hygienic conditions as the calf on some dairy 

 farms, and no young animal is more subject to disease and has less 

 disease-resisting power — largely, of course, because calves are deprived of their 

 natural food supply and are kept crowded together. There is therefore all 

 the more need for the application of sound hygienic conditions in their housing. 



Pigsties. 



Much of the foregoing may be applied to the subject of pigsties. 

 Structural defects — especially in the flooring — must be regarded as a 

 contributing cause of much illness and mortality from rheumatism, pneumonia, 

 swine fever, swine plague, and parasitic infestation. Both sty and yard 

 should possess an impervious floor, and concrete probably forms the most 

 suitable. The animals should be provided with a wooden flooring for sleeping, 

 but this should be removable, and should be removed to clean out the sty. 

 Opening off from the small yard there should be provided (especially for 

 bj-eeding stock) a small paddock or exercise yard. Drainage requires to be 

 free, and for this reason the slope of a hill, if not too steep, provides the most 

 suitable site for sties. The sties themselves are frequently built low, but 

 this has two disadvantages — they are difiicult to clean, and sunlight and air 

 do not get free enough entrance. 



In pens intended for brood sows, a guaz'd rail should be fixed a few inches 

 out from the wall all round in order to prevent the sow overlying the young. 

 Ideal feeding arrangements for pigs are such as limit their opportunity ta 



