446 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 
ally when it interferes with the free movement of the tendons which 
pass behind and in front of the foot. While a large ringbone will often 
interfere but little with the motion of the limb, a smaller growth, if 
situated under the tendon, may become the cause of considerable and con- 
tinued pain. 
A ringbone is doubtless a worse evil than a splint. Its growth, its 
location, its tendency to increased development, its exposure to the influ- 
ence of causes of renewed danger, all tend to impart an unfavorable cast 
to the prognosis of a case and to emphasize the importance and the value 
of an early discovery of its presence and possible growth. Even when the 
discovery has been made, it is often the case that the truth has come 
to light too late for effectual treatm'ent. Months may have elapsed after 
the first manifestation of the lameness before a discovery has been made 
of the lesion from which it has originated, and there is no recall for the 
lapsed time. And by the uncompromising seriousness of the discouraging 
prognosis must the energy and severity of the treatment and the prompt- 
ness of its administration be measured. The periostitis has been over- 
looked; any chance that might have existed for preventing its advance 
to the chronic stage has been lost; the osseous formation is established; 
the ringbone is a fixed fact, and the indications are urgent and pressing. 
Treatment. — The preventive treatment consists in keeping colts well 
nourished and in trimming the hoof and shoeing to properly balance the 
foot, and thus prevent an abnormal strain on the ligaments. Even after 
the ringbone has developed, a cure may sometimes be occasioned by proper 
shoeing directed tov.ard straightening the axis of the foot as viewed from 
the side by making the wall of the hoof from the coronet to the toe con- 
tinuous with the line formed by the front of the pastern. As long as 
inflammation of the periosteum and ligaments remains, a sharp blister 
of biniodide of mercury and cantharides may do good if the animal is 
allowed to rest for four or five weeks. If this fails some success may be 
accomplished by point firing in two or three lines over the ringbone. It 
is necessary to touch the hot iron well into the bone, as superficial firing 
does little good. When all these measures have failed to remove the 
lameness, or when the animal is not worth a long and uncertain treat- 
ment, a competent veterinarian should be engaged to perform double 
neurectomy, high or low, of the planter nerves, or neurectomy of the 
median nerve as indicated by the seat of the lesion. 
This affection, popularly termed bone spavin, is an exostosis of the hock 
joint. The general impression is that in a spavined hock the bony growth 
should be seated on the anterior and internal part of the joint, and this 
is partially correct, as such a growth will constitute a spavin in the 
most correct sense of the term. But an enlargement may appear on the 
upper part of the hock also, or possibly a little below the inner side of 
the lower extremity of the shank bone, forming what is known as a high 
spavin; or, again, the growth may form just on the outside of the hock 
and become an outside, or external, spavin. And, finally, the entire under 
