372 



THE GENESEE FARMER 



with chaff and salt, or good hay wetted with strong 

 brine as food, or bay tea with salt for drink." 



A cure is seldom effected when the disease has ad- 

 vancctl far, but may be very hojiefully attempted 

 when the disease is only in an early stage, and espe- 

 cially when it is detected through the internal ap- 

 pearance of a killed sheep, and has not yet shown 

 itself in any very perceptible external symptom. The 

 infected flock should be removed either to a good salt 

 marsh or to an artificially salted dry pasture. A 

 piece of pasture, of sufficient extent to allow one acre 

 to every ten sheep, may be hurdled off, and sprinkled 

 equally with salt at the rate of one bushel for every 

 sheep; and the flock may be turned into it about 

 three weeks after the sprinkling, and may continue in 

 it till they eat the grass quite close ; and another 

 piece of the same size, and similarly prepared, ought 

 then to be ready for their reception. As much salt 

 as they are disposed to take may be given also with 

 their hay or their other food. An aperient of two 

 ounces of Epsom salt in warm gruel or water must 

 be given to each sheep at the commencement of the 

 treatment, and should afterwards, at some distance of 

 time, be once or twice repeated. Food of as nutri- 

 tious a kind as convenient, such as a pint of beans 

 daily, and a large allowance of good hay, and a quan- 

 tity of good gruel, ought to be constantly allowed. — 

 Many kinds and combinations of medicine, compris- 

 ing mercurials, balsams, essential oils, anodynes, ton- 

 ics, aromatics, and miscellaneous drugs, have been 

 recommended; but, for the most part, are either use- 

 less or positively objectionable. Calomel, at the rate 

 of 4 grains or so a day to each sheep, is confidently 

 prescribed by some veterinarians, but pronounced 

 valueless or worse by others. A daily dose of half a 

 drachm of sulphate of iron and the same quantity of 

 powdered ginger in gruel, is one of the simplest and 

 least objectionable of the prescribed aromatic tonics. 

 A table-spoonful of oil of turpentine, mixed with two 

 of water, and twice administered after an interval of 

 three days, is said, in the Jlgricidtural Report of 

 Staffordshire, to have cured five out of six rotted 

 sheep. And the following recipe is given by Mr. 

 Clater, and is said by Henry Ci.eeve, Esq., to have 

 been used with very salutary effects: — 6 ounces of 

 powdered saltpetre, 5 ounces of fresh powdered gin- 

 ger, 2 ounces of finely powdered red oxide of iron, 

 3J lbs. of common salt, and 3 gallons of boiling wa- 

 ter, — ^the water to be poured on the other ingredients, 

 the mixture stirred, 14 ounces of oil of turpentine to 

 be added when the mixture becomes lukewarm, the 

 whole to be now put into bottles, and three doses, of 

 4 table-spoonfuls each, to be given at intervals of four 

 days to each sheep fasting. 



Rotted sheep, however, no matter how slightly in- 

 fected or liow promptly cured, always retain a taint 

 of the disease, and are peculiarly liable to be rein- 

 fected with it. and never attain restoration to com- 

 plete vigor and perfect health, and, in many instan- 

 ces, fall victims, some 6 or 12 months after, to an at- 

 tack of hoove or of intestinal inflammation. Lambs 

 have occasionally been produced by cured ewes, — 

 but they are feeljle in constitution, and sickly in habit; 

 and any sheep which have had rot, no matter how 

 seemingly well recovered or how eventually high in 

 condition, are readily known by a butcher, from the 



appearance of the liver, to have been diseased.-— 

 Sheep-owners, therefore, will generally find it for their 

 interest, not only to cure and fatten up infected sheep 

 with all possible promptitude, but to sell them a,s soon 

 as they are fattened. 



■■ I m 



RUMINATION. 



This is the remastication of food by a ruminant 

 animal. Liquid or attenuated food passes at once 

 into the third and fourth stomachs, and is not remas- 

 ticated; but all other food, particularly such as con- 

 sists of comparatively dry and solid vegetable matter, 

 descends into the rumen, is there slowly macerated, 

 passes by Uttle and little into the second stomach, 

 and is there separated ]\y compression into a liquid 

 and a solid jiortion, — -the liquid to pass on to the 

 third and the fourth stomachs, and the solid to be re- 

 turned in pellets up the gullet for such remastication 

 as shall reduce it to a pulp, and fit it to pass direct, 

 by re-deglutition, into the third and the fourth stom- 

 achs. The remastication is effected while the animal 

 lies at ease, — and constitutes what is popularly called 

 " chewing the cud," — and takes place only upon mat- 

 ter which nothing short of an operose process can re- 

 duce to perfect pulpiness or liquidity; and the re- 

 gorging which attend it differs widely from the belch- 

 ing or vomiting of a non-ruminp.ut animal, and is as 

 regularly conducted by a specially constituted organ- 

 ism as deglutition or absorption or secretion or any 

 other ordinary act or function of the animal system. 



In order to understand the process of rumination, 

 we must advert to the manner in which the four 

 stomachs communicate with the guUet, and with one 

 another. The gullet is an extensile membranous 

 tube, much more complicated in ruminating quadru- 

 peds than in man, the muscles which surround it be- 

 ing strong, and consisting of two rows of fiber's, 

 crossing one another, and rumiing spirally in opposite 

 directions; and these muscles, by their contractions, 

 so powerfully force the morsel of food begun to be 

 swallowed onwards into the inlet of the stomachs, that 

 the process of deglutition once commenced cannot be 

 stopped, even by the will of the animal. The gullet 

 enters just where the first, second and third stomachs 

 approach one another, and discharges itself almost 

 equally into the first and second. Connected with 

 it is another organ which may be termed the cud-duct 

 This is sometimes a groove and sometimes a tube, ac- 

 cording to its action ; and runs from the termination 

 of the gullet to the third stomach, with the first stom- 

 ach on the left, and the second on the right, and 

 discharges itself almost equally into the second and 

 the third. It has thick prominent margins, which can 

 be brought to meet so as to form a complete canal, 

 and thus constitute a continuation of the gullet across 

 the second stomach into the third. All these parts, 

 the gullet, the cud-duct, the first, the second, and 

 the third stomachs, not only communicate with one 

 another, but all communicate by a common point, 

 the point where the gullet terminates, where the cud- 

 duct commences, and towards which the three stom- 

 achs open or end. Now in the process of returning 

 the macerated food for re-mastication, it is the cud- 

 duct, together with the shut termination of the gul- 

 let approached to the shut inlet of the manyplles, 



