CAUSES OP BRAXY. 



169 



taken into the stomach when the animal is in this state, 

 will have a tendency to kindle braxy, and the liability 

 to it will not only be heightened, but the chances of 

 recovery will also be lessened, by the animal being in 

 high condition. 



Wedder hogs are peculiarly its victims, but only 

 when hirsled, as when allowed to pasture with their 

 mothers they are less liable to it. This is accounted 

 for by the fact, that hirsled hogs are comparatively dully 

 not being familiar with the proper times for feeding, and 

 incapable of selecting the suitable herbage, from having 

 wanted the tutoring of the mother. 



From the beginning of November till the middle of 

 March, sickness commits its greatest ravages, especially 

 among heath sheep, from their being more confined 

 than others to dry binding provender. Frozen gras« 

 is also a common exciting cause, rapidly inducing 

 iflammation by lowering the temperature of the 

 Stomachs so very much as to arrest digestion, and lead 

 to its acting as an irritant. The succulent grass in the 

 sheltered hollows of mountains is more liable to frost 

 than a sapless herbage, and to it, owing to its moisture, 

 the young sheep resort, devouring it eagerly to assuage 

 their thirst. Braxy, however, may arise from other and 

 more obvious causes. The sheep, perhaps when heated 

 by rash dogging, is suddenly chilled by exposure to a 

 shower, or a plunge in a morass, and if the bowels be 

 at the time any way bound up, immediate mischief 

 cannot but ensue. One of the rarest accidents to which 

 it has been attributed is the prevention of the passage of 

 the faeces by a knot, or intussusception, forming on the 

 intestines, but this occurrence would be of difficult dis- 

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