478 



THE FARMER'S MAGAZINE. 



Marshall, and he was inclined to the opinion thdt that 

 disease was in a great measure generated by the rich pas- 

 tures of Lincolnshire. In his county the lambs usually 

 fell in the month of February and March, and after 

 remaining in a sheltered fold till strong enough to stand 

 the weather, thjy returned to the field to the Swedes or 

 turnips ; and after weaning, which took place generally 

 in May or June, the great point with the Wiltshire 

 farmer is to have ready as many changes of food as pos- 

 sible for their lambs ; and some farmers in the county 

 (those who produced the best lambs) gave them four or 

 five changes in the dny. On the Wiltshire hill farms a 

 large quantity of sainfoin was sown, and he believed that 

 was the best preventive for what was termed " scour" 

 or diarrhoea. Whenever they had disease among their 

 lambs, they naturally turned to sainfoin as the best 

 remedy. He did not know that he could add anything 

 further that would throw any light upon the subject. 

 He knew nothing of the malady in question, but, in 

 bis opinion, the best remedy would be found in a 

 change of food, and in the use of sainfoin, where it could 

 be grown. 



Mr. Williams (Baydon, Huiigerford) said this 

 subject was one of the greatest- importance to farmers 

 generally. When cattle or horses were attacked with 

 disease, the evil might generally be met by having re- 

 course to the veterinary surgeon ; but sheep appeared to 

 be beyond_ the aid of the veterinary surgeon and of 

 science, and previous speakers had alluded to the immense 

 loss which they had themselves sustainsd, apparently 

 without the power of helping themselves, in their flocks. 

 Coming from the same county as Mr. Little, he could 

 corroborate what had fallen from him, in reference to 

 the absence of the disease in question in that part of the 

 country. In fact, they knew nothing of it from their 

 own experience; it was a malady which was, happily, 

 quite foreign to them. At the same time they were 

 subject to another disease, of a most awful character — a 

 disease which was almost as ruinous as that which had 

 been described by a gentleman from the North. He 

 happened to have travelled to London that day with 

 their Chairman and with Mr. King, and the latter gen- 

 tleman told him, if he remembered rightly, that he had 

 lost forty lambs within a week ; and another gentleman 

 named Pike, who was also present, said he had lost fifty 

 in the same space of time. 



Mr. King — Within a fortnight. 



Mr. Williams— Well, this difference was not very ma- 

 terial. Now the disease from which their losses occurred 

 was, as he had already intimated, quite distinct from that 

 described by Mr. Marshall. It differed from the disease 

 in Lincolnshire in this respect, that it depended on the 

 ewe. Hence they had a remedy; but then the remedy was, 

 in this, as in many other cases, worse than the disease. The 

 remedy was to wean the lambs ; but the effect of this 

 was that, while they saved the lamb from the scour they 

 injured it in other respects. The question for discussion 

 as stated on the card referred to pleuro-pneumonia and 

 consumption. Now in the case of the disease in his dis- 

 trict there were no symptoms observable over night, 

 and they sometimes found three or four of their lambs 



dead in the morning. If that was consumption, it was 

 certainly very rapid consumption. He had often known 

 a full-grown s'-ieep to go off in the same way. When 

 the shepherd left the fold at night, there was apparently 

 nothing at all wrong : when he went in the morning the 

 sheep was dead. It was a curious fact that in these 

 cases death appeared generally to take place about four 

 o'clock in the morning ; and how the disease was to be 

 accounted for he could not pretend to say, but it was 

 most important that something should be done, if pos- 

 sible, to discover a remedy. Their Chairman had told 

 him that he had lost as many as seventy fat lambs within 

 a week. There were three partial remedies to which 

 he would for a moment allude. The first was that to 

 which he had already referred, namely, the early weaning 

 of the lamb, which of course generally had the effect of 

 spoiling it. He had himself resorted to this remedy ; 

 and after losiig ten lambs a night, he had stopped that 

 species of loss by weaning the remaining lambs at once. 

 Another remedy was to counteract the disease in the ewe 

 by feeding the lambs on something that would act 

 as an antidote ; and he found one of the best things 

 was to let the lambs feed on a crop of wheat. As in all 

 probability a great deal of this year's wheat would be 

 lost through excessive luxuriance, and as wheat now 

 fetched so low a price in the market, this remedy 

 appeared to him deserving of special attention. Mr. 

 Little had spoken of the gnat advantage of feeding on 

 sainfoin. Now that was almost a specific against disease ; 

 he had scarcely ever known it fail to arrest this fearful 

 disease in a flock of sheep. 



Mr. Wallis wished to know whether the lambs in 

 Wiltshire suffered fiom scour before they died so sud- 

 denly ? 



Mr. Williams said there was not the slightest ap- 

 proach to scour, although it was called so. The most 

 pratical farmer, in looking at his flock over night, 

 would be unable to discover any symptom of disease ; 

 in the morning the animal was dead, and a little mucus 

 was found to have escaped. The case was evidently one 

 of rapid inflammation. 



Mr. Wallis had understood Mr. Williams to speak 

 of sainfoin as a certain remedy for scour. 



Mr. Williams said they called it scour, but they 

 never saw the scour till death ; it always came away 

 with the life of the animal. 



Mr. J. G. King (Beedon, Newbury) said: Having 

 lost a great number of lambs within the last fortnight, 

 he had hoped that some gentleman present would have 

 been able to tell him how he ought to treat his Iambs. 

 One mode of treatment had been suggested which he had 

 himself adopted, and which certainly had not proved a 

 preventive. He had allowed a flock of lambs this season 

 to run over two or three fields of wheat, and the result 

 was that he had lost more of those lambs than of the 

 lambs which had been shut in. 



The Rev. C. T. James said the subject of the treatment 

 of lambs was essentially connected with that of the condi- 

 tion of the ewe. No child could ever be reared well if the 

 mother from whom it obtained nourishment was at the 

 time of affording it in bad condition. There was one point 



