328 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA 



hillsides, abandoned farms, and boys leaving the 

 farms. It is not a new pest but in olden time when 

 sheep suffered from it men did not know the cause. 

 Many years ago it swept over Ohio, decimating the 

 Merino flocks, and over all the states of the corn- 

 belt. Then no remedy was known, nor was it un- 

 derstood whence came infection or how immunity 

 could be had. Now we know all this and the stom- 

 ach worm has lost some of its terrors to the intelli- 

 gent and watchful shepherd. 



This fourth stomach of the sheep is just where 

 the intestines attach and where an important part 

 of the digestion takes place. When it is filled with 

 these tiny worms digestion is wonderfully disturbed 

 and the lamb loses tone, the wool appears dead, the 

 skin loses its pinkness, the appetite is deranged. 

 The lamb may scour or may be constipated. It 

 eats earth or rotten wood in the latter stages of 

 the disease. There may come a dropsical swelling 

 beneath the under jaw. This is not a disease, only 

 a symptom of the disease. 



Depend upon it, if it is May, or from then till 

 October, and your lambs are droopy, languid, their 

 wool dead looking, their skins chalky, they have 

 stomach worms. Just catch one, kill it, dissect it at 

 once and examine the fourth stomach with care. 

 You will surely see there the little writhing ser- 

 pents that do the mischief. 



These worms inhabit old sheep too, but do not 

 do much harm. The life history is like this: the 

 worms become mature in the body of the older 



