334 PARTURIENT FEVER. 



recommend as most important during the last five or six 

 weeks' gestation, regular and nutritious feeding, regular 

 exercise, dry and extensive folding. If turnips be the article 

 of food, let there be given in addition a few oats, linseed 

 cake, with hay and straw chaff; let a well sheltered and dry 

 fold be arranged at a short distance from where the ewes are 

 fed during the day, wherein to lodge for the night; the 

 driving to and from these folds will give exercise a circum- 

 stance tending much to promote health in the pregnant ewe;* 

 if the system of heath or pasture feeding is practiced, night 

 folding is then equally necessary. The night fold in common 

 use that formed by building straw and stubble walls, with 

 sheds attached, the front of which has a southern aspect 

 answers admirably. Further explaining the comforts of the 

 pregnant ewe, I will add in the words of the poet, 



" First with assiduous care from winter keep, 

 Well foddered in the stalls, thy tender sheep: 

 Then spread with straw the bedding of thy fold. 

 With fern beneath, to 'fend the bitter cold." 



These statements scarcely need addition ; but as there is 

 a strong probability that this formidable malady will become 

 more common in the United States as the high bred English 

 sheep, and English systems of keeping are introduced, I will 

 append to it the following letter addressed to me by Mr. 

 Thome : 



" THOBNDALE, WASHINGTON HOLLOW, N. Y., April 13, 1863. 



DEAR SIR : * * The puerperal fever has been known 

 in this neighborhood since I first came here, though only to a 

 limited extent during the last two seasons.f * * * The 

 disease more generally affects middle aged ewes, and ewes 

 producing or carrying twins. It does not select those lowest 

 in flesh ; hence the farmers, as a class, are unwilling to 

 believe that feed can remedy it. It generally shows itself 

 from four or five to ten days before lambing. The symptoms 

 you will find fully described in Seaman's Essay, in Vol. XV, 

 of the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society. The 

 treatment which my shepherd has followed, and with good 

 success saving sixteen out of twenty, sick in 1859 has 

 been to separate the sick ewe at once from the flock and give 

 a dose of 2 ozs. Epsom salts, 2 to 3 ozs. molasses, 1 drachm 

 of nitre, mixed with a pint of warm linseed gruel. The 



* I placed these words in italics, and also the words " regular exercise " above. 



t Mr. Thome's statements of his losses, which here follow, have already been 

 mentioned at page 69. 



