264 SHEEP HUSBANDRY IN THE SOUTH. 



The highly offensive odor of the ulcerated feet is so peculiar that it ii 

 strictly pathognomonic of the disease — and would reveal its character to 

 one familiar with it, in the darkest night. 



When the disease has been well kept under during the first season of 

 Its attack, but not entirely eradicated, it will almost or entirely disappear 

 as cold weather approaches, and does not manifest itself until the warm 

 weather of the succeeding summer. It then assumes a mitigated form— 

 the sheep are not rapidly and simultaneously attacked — there seems to be 

 less inflammatory action, constitutionally, and in the diseased parts — the 

 course of the disease is less malignant and more tardy, and it more readi- 

 ly yields to treatment. If well kept under the second summer, it is still 

 milder the third. A sheep will occasionally be seen to limp, but its con- 

 dition will scarcely be affected, and dangerous symptoms will rarely su- 

 pervene. One or two applications made during the summer, in such a 

 way, as I shall presently describe, that one thousand sheep can be sub- 

 mitted to the treatment in half a day — with but a trifle of labor and ex- 

 pense — will now suffice to keep the disease under. At this point a little 

 vigor in the treatment will entirely extinguish the disease. 



With all its fearful array of symptoms, can the hoof-ail be cured in its 

 ^rst attack on a flock 1 The worst case can be promptly cured, as I know 

 by repeated experiments. Take a single sheep, put it by itself, and ad- 

 minister the remedies daili/ after the English fashion, or as I shall 

 presently prescribe, and there is not an ovine disease which more surely 

 yields to treatment. But as already remarked, in a preceding Letter, in 

 this country, where sheep are so cheap, and labor in the summer montha 

 so dear, it would out of the question for an extensive flock-master to at- 

 tempt to keep each sheep by itself, or to make a dai/i/ application of rem- 

 edies. There is not a flock-master within my knowledge who has evei 

 pretended to apply his remedies oftener than once a week, or regularlf/ as 

 often as that, and not one in ten makes any separation between the dis- 

 eased and healthy sheep of a flock into which the malady has been once in- 

 introduced. The consequence necessarily is that though you may cure the 

 sheep noiv diseased, it has infected or inoculated others — and these in turn 

 scatter the contagion, before they are cured. There is not a particle of 

 doubt — nay, I know, by repeated observation, that a sheep once entirely 

 cured may again contract the disease, and thus the malady performs a per- 

 petual circle in the flock. Fortunately, however, the susceptibility to con- 

 tract the disease diminishes, according to my observation, with every suc- 

 ceeding attack; and fortunately also, as already stated, succeeding attacks, 

 iU-tcris ])aribus, becr>me less and less virulent. 



What course shall then be pursued 1 Shall the flock-master sacrifice 

 his sheep — shall he take the ordinary half-way course — or shall he expend 

 more on the sheep than they are worth in attempting to cure them 1 Nei- 

 ther. The course I would advise him to pursue, will appear as I detail 

 the experiments I have made. 



Treatment. — The preparation of the foot, where any separate individual 

 treatment is resolved upon — and this is always necessary, at least in bad 

 eases — is a subject of no dispute. But the labor can be prodigiously 

 economized by attention to a few not very commonly observed particulars. 

 Sheep should be yarded for the operation immediately after a rain, if prac- 

 ticable, as then the hoofs can be readily cut. In a dry time, and after a 

 night which has left no dew on the grass, their hoofs are almost as tough 

 as horn. They must be driven through no mud, or soft dung, on their 

 way to the yard, which would double the labor of cleaning their feet.- 

 Th'e yard m v» be small, so they can be easily caught, and it must be keot 



