356 CATTLE-BREEDING. 



results are neither so likely to occur at the 

 moment nor in the future. Nevertheless, the 

 cow should be carefully attended to, only bred 

 after some time of rest, and then watched with a 

 view to prevent a repetition of the disease. Not 

 infrequently it proves impossible to get a cow 

 which has aborted in calf. More often it is a 

 difficult matter, involving great loss of time? 

 and this sometimes is repeated after each suc- 

 ceeding calving for some years. If a cow thus 

 becomes a shy breeder she loses much time 

 and a great part of her value. If she aborts 

 twice in succession it is ordinarily the part of 

 wisdom to feed her off. It is almost sure that 

 her profitableness is gone, and she may be a 

 source of danger to the herd, for it is by no 

 means certain how far the sporadic and the 

 epidemic or epizootic types of this disease run 

 into each other. Most writers think it at least 

 the part of wisdom to remove the foetus and 

 the afterbirth far beyond sight and smell of the 

 other cows. Youatt strongly recommends this, 

 for he had great doubt of the disease ever be- 

 ing truly contagious, questioned its epidemic 

 character, and fell back on the far more doubt- 

 ful and questionable theory that it was caused 

 by the effect of imagination. He says: *"The 

 cow is an animal considerably imaginative and 

 highly irritable during the period of^ pregnancy. 



*'Touatt on Cattle," Ed. Stevens, p. 383. 



