244 AGRICULTURAL REPORT. 



eincar a little of it on ibe uose. Non-exposure, and dry, well-ventilated stables 

 in winter, generally lead to a speedy cure. If the malady becomes chronic, 

 and assumes an epizootic and malignant form, no remedy has yet been dis- 

 covered which will control it. Perhaps the best practice would be good, careful 

 nursmg. 



ABORTION. 



Abortion is usually produced by a hurt or injury. It has never, in this 

 country, assumed that infectious character that it sometimes does among cows; 

 but it is well TO remove the abortive lamb and the " cleanings " from the sheep- 

 yard, and also to withdraw the ewe and place her in "the hospital." She 

 requires care and extra nursing, or she will become very poor and lose a large 

 portion of her fleece. 



PARTURIENT FEVER. 



This has as yet appeared only among our English sheep. The ewe a few 

 days before lambing appears dull and stupid ; her appetite fails, she exhibits 

 giddiness, and a discharge of a dark color takes place from the vagina. She 

 loiters behind her companions, staggers in her gait, her head droops, and her 

 eyes are partly closed. If she now lambs, and is carefully sheltered and nursed, 

 she sometimes recovers rapidly ; but if no such relief is afforded, typhoid-symp- 

 toms begin to occur. She wanders away alone, exhibits great uneasiness and 

 pain, and strikes her body frequently with her hind feet. The prostration 

 rapidly increases, and the dark colored discharge from the vagina continues 

 and has an extremely offensive odor. A lamb or a pair of lambs are frequently 

 expelled at this stage in a high state of putrefaction, and she is now unable to 

 rise and is almost insensible. Death soon closes the scene. 



The ewe attacked by this disease should at once be removed from the flock, 

 and if a large English ewe, a dose of two ounces of Epsom salts, with two or 

 three ounces of molasses and one drachm of nitre, mixed with a pint of warm lin- 

 seed gruel, should be administered ; and if this does not open the bowels in 

 eight or ten hours, it should be repeated. The nitre and molasses are given 

 subsequently, night and morning, in a quart bottle of gruel, until the fever 

 abates, when the nitre is discontinued. If the ewe lives to the third or fourth 

 day, and the stench of the dark discharge from the vagina shoAvs that the foetus 

 is dead, a small quantity of dry, pulverized belladonna is applied with the end 

 of a finger to the mouth of the womb every hour until it is sufficiently relaxed 

 to allow the removal of the foetus. After this is effected, the womb is thoroughly 

 syringed with warm milk and water, the ewe put in as easy a position as pos- 

 sible, and her posture changed two or three times every day. She is then 

 carefully nursed until recovery. This treatment has proved very successful. 



THE SCAB, ETC. 



The scab, like the itch in human beings, is produced by an insect, and to 

 cure it the insect must be killed. Its first appearance is in little swellings of a 

 greenish blue tint. A pustule is formed, and about the sixteenth day it breaks, 

 discharging a horde of insects to burrow in the skin elsewhere. The diseased 

 sheep rubs itself with violence against every object, using its teeth and feet to 

 allay its intolerable itching, and the wool is torn off its shoulders and sides. If 

 unrelieved, it pines away and soon dies. If the wool is short, the most 

 usual remedy is to immerse the sheep in a strong decoction of tobacco, after 

 scouring the sores with a shoe-brush, dipped in tobacco-water and soap, sufficient 

 to break the scabs. Some add a little turpentine occasionally to the decoction; 

 some also knead the sores with their hands while in the decoction. The writer 

 once had one hundred and fifty sheep suffering from scab thus treated ; they 

 were cured by one application. When it has been performed much more rap- 



