(338 Abstract Report of Agricultural Discussions. 



Laving been genial, with scarcely any wet, the animals do re- 

 markably well. Particularly is that the case if the turnips run up 

 so as to produce their flowering stems, which the lambs can crop, not 

 only with impunity, but with very great advantage. On the other hand, 

 if the turnip-tops are immature, or only partially developed, or if the 

 weather is wet, food of this kind, given as it mostly is in great abund- 

 ance, will act as a direct irritant upon the mucous membrane of the 

 stomach and the intestinal canal, and diarrhoea will be the result. 

 Occasionally this functional derangement of the intestines leads to a 

 partial attack of gastro-enteritis — in other words, to inflammation of 

 the mucous membrane of the intestinal canal, and the young animal 

 soon falls a sacrifice to the scoui-ing. Here, too, we have only to alter 

 the system of management, by limiting the quantity of green im- 

 matui-e tops that are given to the lambs, or substituting some other 

 food. Fortunately at the period of the year when lambs are dropped 

 turnips are very rarely found in this particular condition; but on 

 certain soils and in certain states of the weather it will occasionally 

 occm*. 



Diseases after Weaning. 



DiARUHCEA. 



After weaning, a large number of young lambs are lost, and from 

 precisely the same cause, namely, diarrhoea. Here we frequently find 

 that several causes are brought into operation, some of them unques- 

 tionably of the same nature as those to which I have already alluded, 

 and others totally different. 



If lambs are placed on clover or artificial grasses, and if the 

 temperature is not only elevated, but a great deal of watery vapour 

 is mixed mth the atmosjahere, the animals if they are eating largely 

 of green succulent vegetable matter, particularly if unripe, will become 

 affected with diarrhoea; and nothing less than an alteration of the 

 management will be sufficient to stay the evil. 



Vegetable Hair Balls. 



But this affection is often induced by another cause. It is not, 

 perhaps, so generally known as it ought to be, that the stems and 

 leaves of broad-leaved clover have a large number of vegetable hairs 

 upon them, and that these, when received into the stomach, are very apt 

 to become agglutinated, and to be rolled into a ball-like form within the 

 rumen. So long as substances of this kind remain in the rumen, or first 

 stomach, it is a matter of no consequence whatever ; if they only reach 

 the second stomach, as well as the first, it is also a matter of littlo 

 moment ; but if they j)ass, as they are very likely to do, into 

 the third stomach, or rather through the floor of the third stomach, 

 directly into the fourth, they often become offending agents to 

 this organ, and not unfrequcntly pass on, half digested, into the 

 intestinal canal. I do not mean to say that very many cases of 

 diarrhoea are attributable to causes of this kind, but we not unfre- 

 qucntly find a diseased condition of the fourth stomach, and especially 

 of the small intestines, induced by the presence of such bodies. 



