CHAPTER XIV. 

 COMMON ILLS OF CATTLE. 



Gurr. Hoove. Blackleg. Ringworm. Milk Fever, or Drop of the 

 Kidneys. Garget, or Mammitis. Mawbound. Hoven. Foul and 

 Thorough-pin. " Foot-and-Mouth." Pleuro. Sore Teats. 



Gurr. The malady known as " scour," or " gurr," is the 

 earliest ailment that cattle are heir to, and as it occurs when 

 calves are a day or two or a week or two old, it is commonly 

 a weakening scourge, and not uncommonly fatal. It usually 

 arises from indigestion, which is caused by improper feeding, 

 or by a chill in a damp or draughty calf-house, or nausea or 

 inertia induced by foul air, or by constitutional debility. 



Carelessness and ignorance on the part of man, chiefly the 

 former perhaps, are at the foundation of most of the mischief 

 so common amongst young calves carelessness about the 

 draining, the dryness, the ventilation, the temperature of calf- 

 sheds, most of all about the feeding of the calves, and so on. 

 When calves run at large with their dams, they seldom suffer 

 from indigestion ; and why ? Simply because the cows instinc- 

 tively decline to let them suck too much at one time, and 

 because as they suck the milk instead of drinking it, it gets 

 well mixed with the saliva of the mouth, and cannot be gulped 

 down the throat too rapidly. 



Better feed a young calf four or five times a day, with less 

 than a pint of milk at a time, until it is several days old, and 

 never to give it all it would like to drink. Feeding-pails, with 

 artificial teats, which cause the calf to suck in its food as if from 

 the teat of its mother, are useful preventives of scour, along 



