DISEASES OF SHEEP 185 



TAPE WORMS Unthriftiness is the chief sign of tape worms, with con- 

 tinued and increasing loss of condition. Sometimes the 

 gait is unsteady from weakness. Sometimes the flanks are distended with 

 gas; while the appetite is keen, the animal continually craving for food and 

 water. But the chief symptom is the actual finding of segments or joints 

 of the tape worm in the droppings. The worms are of two kinds the 

 fringed tape worm taking up its place in the bile-duct and the broad tape 

 worm attaching itself to the intestines. 



Treatment There is no positive way to reach the fringed tape worm in the 

 bile duct. The broad tape worm in the intestines succumbs 

 to the following treatment: Withhold all food for twenty-four hours, then 

 give one-half to one dram of extract of male fern in two to four ounces of 

 castor oil. Do not use the infected pasture for either sheep or cattle. How- 

 ever, if the tape worms are of the fringed species, the same pasture will 

 do for horses and cattle, as the fringed species will not attack them, but in 

 time die out. Be sure to feed the flock well, give plenty of drinking water, 

 have salt where they can get it, and wherever possible move them fre- 

 quently from pasture to pasture. This is another case where an anti-parasite 

 mixture, such as already described, using common barrel salt thoroughly 

 mixed with Conkey's Stock Tonic in proportion of 1 part Stock Tonic 

 to 9 parts common salt, will cost practically nothing not over a cent and a 

 quarter a month for a sheep, but will practically guarantee you against 

 serious losses from tape worms or other numerous parasites of stomach 

 and intestines. It is also plain, that where this mixture is constantly before 

 the animals, so that they get it with regularity (for they will help themselves 

 to a little each day if it is always where they can get it), it will actually 

 destroy the fringed tape worm above referred to before it has a chance to 

 get to the bile duct, where no method of treatment can be sure of reaching 

 it. The common sense plan is to treat these parasites before they get past 

 the stomach or intestines. Then you have got them! 



% 



WOOL-EATING Sheep do not have many vices, but this is one of them. 

 It is caused by some defect in the feed, and is especially 

 common in winter. It will be necessary to separate the wool eaters from 

 the flock, but the whole flock should have change in feed, giving a little corn 

 if possible. Mix Conkey's Stock Tonic with the ground feed, 1 teaspoonful 

 to each sheep. Sometimes in lambs the habit is formed from sucking at 

 the clotted wool tags around the udder of the dam. It is plain that 

 attention to these, trimming them away from the udder, will prevent the 

 habit. 



