CHAPTER XV. 



SPBING MANAGEMENT - CONTINUED. 



CONGENITAL GOITRE IMPERFECTLY DEVELOPED LAMBS 



RHEUMATISM TREATMENT OF THE EWE AFTER LAMBING 



CLOSED TEATS UNEASINESS INFLAMED UDDER 



DRYING OFF DISOWNING LAMBS FOSTER LAMBS 



DOCKING LAMBS CASTRATION. 



CONGENITAL GOITRE, OR SWELLED NECK. The thyroid 

 glands are small, soft, spongy bodies on each side of the upper 

 portion of the trachea, (wind -pipe.) Lambs are sometimes 

 born with them enlarged to once or twice the size of an 

 almond, and they then have the feeling of a firm, separate body, 

 lying between the cellular tissue and the muscles of the neck. 

 The lamb thus affected is generally small and lean, or if it 

 is large and plump it has a soft, jelly-like feeling, as if its 

 muscular tissues were imperfectly developed. In either case, 

 the bones are unnaturally small. It is excessively weak 

 the plump, soft ones being often unable to stand, and usually 

 dying soon after birth. The others perhaps linger a little 

 longer sometimes several days but they perish on the 

 least exposure. So far as my observations have extended this 

 condition always, to a greater or lesser extent, accompanies 

 the glandular enlargement under consideration ; but it also 

 appears without it, and, as I shall presently show, sometimes 

 to a highly destructive extent. 



Having early adopted the view that the preservation of 

 the life of a lamb, which is incapable of attaining that full 

 structural development on which the vigor of the constitution 

 depends, is a loss instead of a gain and being specially 

 averse to tolerating in a breeding flock any animal even 

 suspected of being capable of carrying along and transmitting 

 a hereditary disease I never have applied any remedy 

 whatever for " swelled neck." I have seen very little of it 

 for the last few years; but events in 1862, presently to be 

 mentioned, have surrounded the subject with new interest, 



