340 MEADOWS AND PASTURES 



Sheep on Permanent Pastures. Sheep in the West 

 have few diseases apart from starvation and predatory 

 animals. In eastern pastures they find enemies far more 

 deadly and insidious, the internal parasites. He who 

 conquers the parasite has nothing else to fear in sheep- 

 farming; the other problems are simple and easy. The 

 history of the stomach worm, the parasite creating the 

 worst ravages in American flocks, is briefly this : It is a 

 small worm about Y^' long inhabiting the fourth stomach 

 of the sheep or lamb. It causes anaemia or bloodlessness, 

 disordered digestion, scours, constipation and in lambs 

 death and in old sheep emaciation. The worms live from 

 year to year in the bodies of the old ewes; their eggs 

 are deposited on the ground, hatch and the small worms 

 develop and crawl up a little way on the green grass. 

 Lambs eating them become afflicted and a whole train 

 of terrible consequences ensues. 



Stomach worms have done more to deprive eastern 

 pastures of sheep than all other causes combined. There 

 are certain things that will decrease their work. Re- 

 membering that ewes carry over the germs, one can con- 

 fine ewes and lambs to the dry lot and barn until the 

 lambs are old enough to wean. If the ewes are bred 

 for early lambing the lambs will be old enough to wean 

 by the time grass is sweet and strong. The lambs may 

 then be taken to fresh pasture with no old sheep mixed 

 with them. If the pasture had in it no sheep at all for 

 12 months or more all the better. Thus treated lambs 

 will commonly be clean and thrifty. There is little dan- 

 ger of infestation in dry lots, though one should early 

 treat scouring ewes with worm-eradicating medicine. One 



