222 CONFINEMENT TO YARDS AND DRY FEED. 



comparatively innutritious, is, in the absence of better green 

 feed, a healthful change in the diet of pregnant ewes. It 

 keeps down the tendency to costiveness, habitual to females 

 in that situation, and in conjunction with that exercise which 

 is required to obtain it, renders the system less subject to the 

 plethora, which is also natural in pregnancy, but which is 

 greatly fostered by rich food and inactivity. But to attain 

 these objects, the sheep should be let out an hour a day, instead 

 of the entire day, in warm winter weather. It should obtain 

 a small portion of its feed, instead of the whole of it, from 

 the fields. 



Sheep, like other animals, spontaneously diminish their 

 amount of . exercise as they advance in pregnancy, and it 

 thence may very properly be inferred that they require less 

 of it than at other times to preserve a healthy condition. It 

 is also undoubtedly true that excessive or fatiguing exercise 

 is positively injurious at this period. But if we can trust to 

 established physiological principles, or to the teachings of 

 analogy, the sudden change produced in the habits of an 

 active, roving animal, by rigid confinement from the com- 

 mencement to the close of gestation accompanied by a 

 complete alteration of diet must be attended by baneful 

 consequences. Are we told that pregnant sheep thrive and 

 grow fat in this confinement fatter than when they are let 

 out on the fields ? This is true, and it is one of the dangerous 

 incidents of the system. Pregnancy of itself favors the 

 taking on of flesh; and when this tendency is aided by 

 concentrated and highly nutritious food, and by entire 

 inactivity, the condition established is rather that of plethora 

 high condition attended by an unnatural excess of blood 

 than of the healthy fleshiness which comes with natural feed 

 and exercise. 



We know that the sow which is confined closely to the 

 pen and fed to fatness on wholly artificial food never farrows 

 in safety. We should esteem that farmer beside himself who 

 confined his mares and cows to little dry yards and to dry 

 feed during the whole term of pregnancy. The most 

 celebrated practitioners of medicine allow no such changes of 

 habit among their human subjects during this period. I 

 can not do better than to quote the sensible remarks of Dr. 

 Bedford on this subject. He says : 



" Allow me here to remark that, as a general principle, if 

 the pregnant female observe strictly the ordinances which na- 

 ture has inculcated for her guidance ; if, for example, she take 



