MODERN SHEEP: BREEDS AND MANAGEMENT. .317 



so it goes on and on unless the most strenuous effort is employed 

 to annihilate the disease. It will be noticed that in dry weather 

 the malady seems easy to deal with and the shepherd will be con- 

 gratulating himself upon the mastery of the trouble, but when 

 wet weather again sets in he is very liable to find almost every 

 member of the flock affected again. There are two essentials nec- 

 essary in the cure of a very bad case of footrot. The first is a 

 hard working faithful shepherd, one who will cast sentiment aside 

 and use the knife rigorously, and the second a piece of land upon 

 which foot-rotten sheep have never been pastured. It is absolutely 

 necessary that in treating footrot that the shepherd cut deep down 

 into the very foundation of the disease. This does not mean that 

 he must practice unnecessary acts of cruelty on the unfortunate 

 animal, but that he must cut away all dead and diseased parts 

 of the hoof. Bleeding will not be in evidence only when the live 

 flesh is cut and a careful operator will avoid this. As soon as the 

 afflicted individuals that have been treated are free from lame- 

 ness they should be run through a trough containing a solution 

 of blue vitriol or carbolic acid together with those that have not 

 yet become affected, and removed to the new field or farm before 

 mentioned. 



After proper trimming and cleansing of the diseased feet 

 they should be dressed with either of the following dressings: 

 Butyr of antimony, muriatic acid and blue vitriol equal parts, 

 mixed ; or blue vitriol, nitric acid and red lead equal parts, mixed. 

 One or two dressings of either of these prescriptions will affect 

 a cure, but it must be remembered that, in long standing cases, un- 

 less the sheep which have been treated are removed to an un- 

 affected area, the most heroic effort of the shepherd to annihilate 

 the dread disease will be futile. 



THE STOMACH WORM. 



The stomach worm is one of the most destructive parasites 

 which the American shepherd has to deal with, and evidently our 

 flocks suffer more from their intrusions than do the flocks of 

 the British Isles; at least this has been the author's experience. 

 The stomach worm is a small thread-like parasite about an inch 

 in length whose habitat is the fourth stomach of the sheep or lamb. 

 It causes greater mortality among lambs than adult sheep. Amer- 

 ican shepherds lay blame to old infected pastures for a good deal 

 of the destructive work of this insidious pest. While no doubt old 

 pastures are in a measure largely responsible for the prevalence of 

 same in some flocks, too much weight should not be given to this 

 idea, as flocks that have depastured on such grazing grounds for 

 centuries and which have not been molested with the plough in 

 that time are known to be entirely free from their ravages, while 



