240 



DISEASES OP SHEEP 



surrounded with brushwood faggots on the north and east sides at 

 least, if not all round ; and into which the weakly lambs and ewes 

 may be driven, and in stormy weather the v.hole flock may take re- 

 fuge with manifest advantage. 



Next in importance to shelter stands food. The animal may be 

 stinted in his growth, and prepared for scab by starvation; or he may 

 be inevitably destroyed by over-feeding, or by sudden change of food. 

 The unhealthy seasons for sheep, putting the rot for a moment out 

 of the question, are not the winter, when no grass grows, nor the 

 summer, when it is all burned up, but the spring and the autumn, 

 when there is plenty, and too much to eat. They contrive to live, if 

 not to fatten in the two former seasons, but ihey perish from excess 

 or change of food during the latter two. 



There is one disease, however, which is caught, or the foundation 

 for which is laid in the summer, and that is the rot; but from what 

 has been stated with regard to this disease, a proper system of hus- 

 bandry, and attention to little unsuspected, but most dangerous, nooks 

 and corners, would materially limit the ravages of the rot. 



The grand fault in Che management of sheep, and of all domestic 

 animals, is, that the farmer pays so little personal attention to them, 

 and pursues one undeviating course, the same that he learned from 

 his father, whatever be the state of his flock, and whatever the state 

 of the season. To this must be added — the most absurd, and the 

 most injurious of all — a spirit of fatalism ; a submission, not without 

 repining, but without an effort to avert them, to many and serious 

 losses, which a little care and personal trouble might have prevented. 



