CATTLE— CARE AND MANAGEMENT. 



i6f 



CATTLE, Hoove, Eoven, or Blown. — 

 This disease is a distention of the rumen, 

 or first stomach, by the gas which is ex- 

 tracted from certain substances under- 

 going the process of fermentation within 

 it. The herbage is hastily gathered at 

 first, and received into the rumen, in order 

 to undergo there a process of maceration, 

 by means of which it may be more per- 

 fectly ground down, and all its nutritive 

 matter extracted when it is subjected to a 

 second mastication. 



The rumen has been described as divid- 

 ed into various compartments, and its 

 coats containing a strong muscular struc- 

 ture. By the action of these muscles the 

 food is made slowly to traverse these 

 compartments in the order in which it was 

 received ; and the journey, in the ordinary 

 state of health, occupies sufficient time for 

 the herbage to be to a certain degree 

 macerated or softened, but not for that 

 process of fermentation to be set up, to 

 which all vegetables are liable. 



Supposing an ox to be suddenly turned 

 into new and luxuriant pasture, he sets to 

 work, and gathers the herbage rapidly 

 and greedily ; so much so that the stomach 

 is unable to propel forward the different 

 portions of food as they are received, but 

 becomes overloaded and clogged, and at 

 length ceases altogether to act upon its 

 contents. The food remains longer in 

 the stomach than nature designed that it 

 should, and it begins to ferment; and 

 while fermenting, throws out a quantity of 

 gas, which distends the stomach almost 

 or quite to bursting. Thence arises the 

 danger of sudden change of pasture from 

 an inferior to a better quality, and the 

 numerous cases of distension of the 

 stomach and death which occur when the 

 fog-grass is plentiful and succulent, or the 

 beast has without preparation or care been 

 turned upon clover or turnips. 



Some animals, however, are subject to 

 hoove, but in a slighter degree, without 

 this change of pasture. Many a weakly 

 cow has occasional swellings of the paunch 

 where there has been little or no change 

 of food. The stomach, also, is subject to 

 disease — it sympathizes with disease of 

 every other part; and one of the first and 

 most frequent results of an unhealthy state 

 of it is the production of an acid, which 

 wonderfully accelerates and increases the 

 process of fermentation and the develop- 



ment of gas. Hence it is that distension 

 of the stomach is an accompaniment of 

 almost every malady to which cattle are 

 liable. No case of difficult parturition, 

 or of dropping after calving, or of milk 

 fever, occurs without some degree of dis- 

 tension of the paunch, either from the 

 stomach being so weakened as to be 

 unable to force the food along, or from its 

 secreting this unnatural and unhealthy 

 acid, so favorable to the progress of fer- 

 mentation. 



The symptoms of hoove are sufficiently 

 known. The beast seems to swell, and 

 that to an enormous extent ; the breath- 

 ing is very laborious, and the animal is- 

 evidently in great distress, and threatened 

 with immediate suffocation, from the pres- 

 sure of the distended stomach against the 

 diaphragm diminishing the cavity of the 

 chest, and rendering it impossible for the 

 lungs to expand. The difficulty ot breath- 

 ing increases with the distension of the 

 stomach and the pressure on the lungs, 

 and the animal is inevitably lost if relief 

 is not soon obtained. 



This relief consists, and can alone con- 

 sist, in relieving the stomach from the 

 distension. But how is this to be accom- 

 plished ? Medicine seems to be almost 

 or quite thrown away. If a drink is 

 given, not a drop of it will find its way 

 into the paunch, the entrance to which is 

 so firmly closed that it seems scarcely pos- 

 sible that even a ball should now break 

 through the floor. A very stimulating, 

 drink, passing into the fourth stomach,, 

 and exciting it, may, by sympathy, induce- 

 the paunch to act ; yet it is difficult to* 

 conceive how that viscus can possibly act 

 while its fibres are put thus violently upon 

 the stretch. 



Something might have been done by 

 way of prevention. If, when the cattle 

 had been turned into the fresh pasture, 

 they had been carefully watched, and re- 

 moved again to the straw-yard, before the 

 paunch had been too muqh gorged, and 

 this had been repeated two or three times, 

 the appetite would have been blunted and 

 hoove prevented. 



Some fanners, an hour or two before 

 they have turned such cows as are of a. 

 greedy disposition into a fresh pasture, 

 give them a cordial drink. The stomach 

 is stimulated by this, and induced to con- 

 tract in time upon its contents ; and this- 



