ABORTION, OR SLINKING. 



a long time— the skin clings to the ribs — the appetite does not re- 

 turn, and the milk is dried up. Some internal chronic complaint now 

 takes its rise, and the foundation is laid for consumption and death. 



When the case is more favorable, tlie results are, nevertheless, 

 very annoying. The cow very soon goes again to heat, but in a great 

 many cases she fails to become pregnant ; she almost certainly does 

 so if she is put to the bull during the first heat after abortion. The 

 heat again and again returns, but she does not stand to the bulling ; 

 and so the season is wasted, while she becomes a perfect nuisance 

 by continually worrying the other cattle. 



If she should come in calf again during that season, it is very 

 probable that about the same period of utero-gestation, or a little 

 later, she will again abort ; or that when she becomes in calf the 

 following year, the same fatality will attend her. Some say that 

 this disposition to cast her young one gradually ceases; that if she 

 does miscarry, it is at a later and still later period of pregnancy ; 

 and that, in about three or four years, she may be depended upon 

 as a tolerably safe breeder : he, however, would be exceedingly in- 

 attentive to his interest who kept a profitless beast so long. 



The calf very rarely lives, and in the majority of cases it is born 

 dead or putrid. If there should appear to be any chance of saving 

 it, it should be washed with warm water, carefully dried, and fed 

 frequently with small quantities of new milk, mixed, according to 

 the apparent weakness of the animal, either with raw eggs or good 

 gruel ; while the bowels should, if occasion requires, be opened by 

 means of small doses of castor oil. If any considerable period has 

 to elapse before the natural term of pregnancy would have expired, it 

 will usually be necessary to bring up the little animal entirely by hand. 



The treatment of abortion will diflPer little from that of parturition, 

 presently to be described. If the farmer has once been tormented 

 by this pest in his dairy, he should carefully watch the approaching 

 symptoms of casting the calf, and as soon as he perceives them, 

 should remove the cow from the pasture to a comfortable cow-house 

 or shed. If the discharge be glairy, but not offensive, he may hope 

 that the calf is not dead : he will be assured of this by the motion 

 of the foetus, and then it is possible that the abortion may yet be 

 avoided. He should hasten to bleed her, and that copiously, in pro- 

 portion to her age, size, condition, and the state of excitation in which 

 he may find her ; and he should give a dose of physic immediately 

 after the bleeding. The physic beginning to operate, he should ad- 

 minister half a drachm of opium and half an ounce of sweet spirit of 

 nitre. Unless she is in a state of great debility, he should allow 

 nothing but gruel, and he should beep his patient as quiet as he can. 

 By these means he may occasionally allay the e^eneral or local irri- 

 tation that precedes or causes the abortion, and the cow may yet go 

 to her full time. 



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