THE DISEASES OF SHEEP 321 



nant garget that have come under his observation 

 have had a common cause (not one mentioned in the 

 hooks), a sudden increase i^i the food of the ewe, 

 resulting in perhaps some morbid change in her 

 blood that going to the udder, shortly after her 

 lambing (the period has sometimes been as long 

 perhaps as two weeks thereafter) and finding there 

 the causative germ has set up there the great and 

 rapid destruction of live tissue that is seen. Doubt- 

 less the disease is caused by the multiplication of 

 microbes coming from an introduced germ, equally 

 doubtless the conditions must be right for the de- 

 velopment of that germ. And the right conditions 

 seem to be the derangement of the blood by too 

 much food, especially by feeding with corn (maize). 



A skilled veterinarian once related to the writer 

 that he had never dissected the udder of a cow 

 without finding therein, within the milk ducts, 

 germs or bacteria that he considered the agents 

 that cause bovine garget. How the germs got there 

 he could not tell. When conditions were right for 

 the germ it multiplied and did its work of destruc- 

 tion. When conditions were right for the cow it 

 remained, waiting. This is probably the explana- 

 tions also in the case of the ewe. 



Corn feeding of milking ewes has apparently in- 

 duced most of the cases of malignant garget that 

 have come under the writer's observation. Indeed 

 he has seen a fine ewe, proud of her two beautiful 

 lambs, with an udder like a Jersey cow, break into 

 the lot of feeding lambs and gorge herself with corn j 



