566 DISEASES OF CATTLE, SHEEP, GOATS, ETC. 



come to an appreciation of the fact that clean water it not only whole- 

 some but profitable. 



Many sheepmen maintain a hospital band at the home ranch, 

 and the sick, weak, and crippled sheep from all the bands are brought 

 in to this point and given a chance to recuperate. Some outfits kill 

 those sheep which can not keep up, and take the pelt. Others, when 

 a sheep can not keep up, let it drift and take a chance on picking it 

 up again a very small chance on an open prairie in coyote country. 



It is in keeping with the careless practices mentioned above that 

 some sheepmen refuse to bother with a disease like gid, which takes 

 from the flocks from two or three to forty sheep yearly, on the ground 

 that it is too small a matter. Others claim that it is impossible to 

 get sheep herders to do anything more than herd the sheep, which is 

 often true. However, a realization that under some conditions the 

 loss may amount to hundreds of sheep, together with the increasing 

 value of sheep, will probably induce sheepmen to pay more attention 

 to this disease, especially when it is realized that the avoidable neglect 

 of a simple method of prevention endangers not only the flocks of 

 the owner, but also those of his neighbors. As for the herders, it is 

 usually true that the outfits with the hardest working owners and 

 sheep foremen get the best service from their herders. 



OPERATION AS A SUBSTITUTE FOR SLAUGHTER. 



A number of Montana sheepmen, mostly Scotchmen, who have 

 handled sturdded or giddy sheep in Scotland, prefer to operate for 

 gid instead of killing the sheep and destroying the brain. Of the two 

 operative methods usual elsewhere, the use of the trocar and of the 

 trephine, the trocar method alone is used in Montana so far as the 

 writer learned, although such simple methods as cutting out a piece 

 of bone with a pocketknife and extracting the cyst, or puncturing 

 the cyst with a pocketknife, are more or less common. The writer 

 talked with one man who in addition to these methods had tried 

 boring a hole in the skull with a knife blade and using a rubber 

 syringe to suck out the parasite, and had also tried injecting a half 

 teaspoonful of tincture of iodin and potassium iodid. Some men 

 claim to save 50 per cent of sheep operated on, and claims were made 

 of even higher percentages of success. Others, including one man 

 who claimed to have operated on 50 sheep, had saved none. 



It is commonly believed that operating instruments can be ob- 

 tained only in Scotland or elsewhere in Europe. This is not correct. 

 Trephine outfits can be purchased of any one of a number of makers 

 of surgical instruments in the United States, and can be ordered 

 from almost any druggist. Trocar outfits with cannula and syringe, 

 designed expressly for operating on giddy sheep, can be imported 

 through certain American firms. Such outfits, boxed, will cost up 

 to $9. Nevertheless trocars, cannulas, and syringes can be made to 

 order in this country at a cost of $5 or less. One or two sheep saved 

 will pay for this. When a giddy sheep can not be marketed and will 

 be fed to the dogs in any case, the sheep which die as a result of an 

 operation are no loss, and those which are saved are clear gain. 



