4:80 HANDY-BOOK OP HUSBANDRY. 



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" After years of experience I discarded all medicines, except those 

 " to cure hoof-rot and scab ; and I finally cured those diseases 

 " cheaper by selling the sheep. An ounce of prevention is worth 

 "a pound of cure. If sheep are well kept, summer and winter, 

 ** not over-crowded in pastures, and kept under dry and well-ven- 

 *' tilated covers in winter, and housed when the cold fall rains 

 *' come on, there will be no necessity for remedies of any kind. 

 " If not so handled, all the remedies in the world won't help them, 

 *' and the sooner a careless, shiftless man loses his sheep, the 

 *' better. They are out of their misery and are not spreading 

 *' contagious diseases among the neighboring flocks.' 



*' When to the two maladies above named, (hoof-rot and scab,) 

 *' are added a very fatal but infrequent one in the spring, ordinarily 

 " termed grub-in-the-head, catarrh or cold, colic, parturient fever, 

 *' (the last quite rare and mostly confined to English sheep,) and 

 *' the few minor diseases of sheep or lambs — we have almost the 

 *' entire list with which the American sheep-farmer is familiar. 

 " All the diseases named do not, in my opinion, cut off annually 

 *' two per cent, of well-fed and really well-managed grown sheep ! 

 *' Nothing is more common than for years to pass by in the small 

 " flocks of our careful breeders, with scarcely a solitary instance 

 *' of disease in them. I have not space to offer any conjectures 

 " as to the causes of an immunity from disease so remarkable in 

 '* comparison with the condition of England, France, and Ger- 

 " many, in the same particular. 



" Low Type of American Sheep Diseases. — A discrim- 

 *' inating English veterinary writer, Mr. ^pooner, has remarked 

 '' that owing to its greatly weaker muscular and vascular structure, 

 ''the diseases of the sheep are much less likely to take an inflam- 

 " matory type than those of the horse, (and, he might have added, 

 " the ox,) and that the character of its maladies is generally that of 

 " debility. Mr. Spooner wrote with his eye on the mutton sheep 

 *' of England — constantly forced forward by the most nutritious 

 *' food, in order to attain early maturity and excessive fatness. 

 '' Still more strongly then do his remarks apply to the ordinarily 

 '' fed wool-producing sheep of the United States. I long ago 



