182 BRITISH SHEEP AND SHEPHERDING. 



may be necessary to leave it there a day or two in bad cases to 

 make a thorough heal. There is no advantage in making a foot 

 bleed, or of applying a caustic so strong that the sheep is unduly 

 pained. Yet one often hears shepherds boasting that they had 

 done so. This shows a misconception of the nature of the disease. 

 What is needed is to trace out every particle of disease by paring 

 the hoof until at all points there is a clean junction of sound hoof 

 where it joins the sensitive part of the foot ; the application of 

 any antiseptic such as blue vitriol or carbolic -acid will then leave 

 a clean and sound foot. Sometimes, however, the whole hoof 

 may come off. Very bad feet should be put into foot-rot boots, 

 or be wrapped round with sacking, so that dirt cannot enter the 

 wounds for some days whilst new hoof is forming. When a shepherd 

 finds sheep are falling with foot-rot, he should at once run them 

 through a foot-rot bath containing a solution of sulphate of copper, 

 give them a daily walk on hard roads to harden the feet, and in 

 bad weather make them stand on lime for a time under cover. 

 Of all things, he should avoid violent caustics such as butyr of 

 antimony, except where there is proud flesh, as a distorted, 

 hard hoof forms, which is very difficult to deal with should foot-rot 

 break out again from a fresh attack, as it is quite possible for it 

 to do. 



On Flooding Land. Sheep should not be allowed to graze on 

 flooding land between June and the first sharp frost in autumn, 

 for fear of their getting liver fluke, and at all times rock -salt should 

 be kept before sheep. Husk, generally regarded as a serious 

 ailment in calves and sheep, has ceased to be regarded so by me 

 since I have adopted the practice of submitting them to chlorine 

 fumes derived from bleaching powder on which a little hydro- 

 chloric acid is poured. If the sheep are placed in an air-tight 

 building for a short time, and made to inhale the fumes, the husk 

 worms are easily dislodged ; but the inexperienced must be careful 

 not to let the sheep remain in more than a very short time, or 

 they will suffocate. With this experience I do not worry about 

 husky land. The circumstances are, however, different in the 

 case of the husk which comes from lung worms, for they, like the 

 liver fluke, when once they are established in the lungs or liver 

 respectively cannot be destroyed without killing the animal. 



Stale or sour green food has been dealt with already, and the 

 losses from this are often very great. Land carrying cropping 

 of this kind must not be confounded with land that is " sheep 

 sick " or tired of sheep, as it is sometimes described. In the 

 former case it is a question of the unhealthiness of the food which 

 has grown up since a former crop was fed off by sheep quite recently. 



Sheep-sick Land. Sheep-sick land is that which has been over- 

 stocked with sheep, generally for a long period ; though on wet, 



