SP:VENTH annual year book— part X. 487- 



scattered localities. This danger, however, is reduced to a minimum by 

 the excellent care given to both animals and pens while the exhibition 

 is in progress. The greatest danger is probably met when the animals 

 are loaded and unloaded over a chute at the railway station, which is 

 used by all of the exhibitors in common. 



The raising of Angora goats is also becoming an industry of great 

 economic importance. Their value as producers of mohair, of fleece- 

 bearing skins, and of meat, together with their efficiency as eradicators 

 of brush and weeds, is bringing them into increasing favor with prac- 

 tical American people, while their beautiful silky coats and gentle dis- 

 positions make them very attractive as pets for those who seek to 

 derive pleasure rather than profit from them. At the present time large 

 sums of money are invested in these animals, and individual flocks num- 

 bering thousands of animals are not uncommon in some localities. Ant 

 asEoc'iation of breeders has been formed which supports a registry book, 

 and live-stock exhibitions at which the Angora forms a prominent feature 

 are sure to attract general interest. 



The experiments which have been made at this laboratory prove that 

 Angora goats may readily be inoculated with foot-rot from sheep, and that 

 where sheep and goats are allowed to pasture together they may be in- 

 discriminately attacked by an invasion of this disease. 



To what degree foot-rot exists among sheep and goats in this country 

 can not be accurately stated, for the reason that our ^ statistics are in- 

 sufficient to furnish a basis for a reasonable estimate. Occasional out- 

 breaks, especially the highly virulent ones, are reported, and in these 

 cases about three-fourths of the flock become affected. Owing to the 

 slow, protracted course of the disease and the length of time required 

 for the affection to pass through a bunch of sheep, the losses occurring 

 from the shrinkage of flesh in market sheep and from the diminution 

 of the supply of milk for the sucking lambs of the affected ewes reach' 

 material proportions. In addition to these direct losses, the owner of an 

 infected flock of full-blooded animals is subjected to discouraging failures- 

 in his attempts at selling off his surplus breeding stock, as buyers are 

 naturally reluctant to introduce lame animals into their sheep-folds. 

 The time and labor spent in the treatment of the feet of an infected 

 • flock should also be brought forward in this calculation of monetary: 

 loss. 



DIFFERE.NTIAL DIAGNOSIS. 



There are but few pathological conditions of the feet of sheep or goats- 

 that may be mistaken for contagious foot-rot. When lameness first 

 makes its appearance in a flock there may be some difliculty, however,, 

 in determining the exact nature of the trouble. Lameness may be pri- 

 marily caused in these animals by wounds of the feet, by purulent in- 

 flammation of the interdigital space (so-ealled non-contagious foot-rot), 

 by stoppage of the orifice of the biflex canal, by suppurative cellulitis 

 (cutaneous abscesses), or by foot-and-mouth disease, and for a time the 

 lesions produced by any one of these causes offer a very confusing re- 

 semblance to those characteristics of the invading stage of foot-rot. 



