150 DISEASES OF CATTLE. 



Preventive. — The true preventive of such conditions is to be found 

 in a sound hygiene. The breeding animal should be of adult age, 

 neither overfed nor underfed, but well fed and moderately exercised ; 

 in other words, the most vigorous health should be sought, not only 

 that a strong race may be propagated, but that the whole herd, or 

 nearly so, may breed with certainty. Fleming gives 79 per cent as 

 the general average of cows that are found to breed in one year. 

 Here more than a fifth of the progeny is sacrificed and a fifth of the 

 product of the dairy. With careful management the proportion of 

 breeders should approach 100 per cent. The various local and gen- 

 eral obstacles to conception should be carefully investigated and 

 removed. The vigorous health which comes from a sufficiently lib- 

 eral diet and abundant exercise should be solicited, and that compara- 

 tive bloodlessness and weakness which advances with undue fattening 

 should be sedulously avoided. In bull or cow which is becoming 

 unduly fat and showing indications of sexual indifference, the treat- 

 ment must be active. Turning out on a short pasture where it must 

 work hard for a living will often suffice. The bull which can not be 

 turned out to pasture may sometimes be utilized in the yoke or tread 

 power, or he may be kept a part of his time in a field or paddock 

 chained by the ring in his nose to a strong wire extending from one 

 side of the lot to the other, and attached securely to two trees or 

 posts. The wire should be higher than the back of the bull, which 

 will move from end to end at frequent intervals. If he is indisposed 

 to take sufficient exercise in this way he may be safely driven. An 

 instance of the value of exercise in these incipient cases of fatty de- 

 generation is often quoted. The cow Dodona, condemned as barren 

 at Earl Spencer's, was sold cheap to Jonas Webb, who had her driven 

 by road a distance of 120 miles to his farm at Wilbraham, soon after 

 which she became pregnant. In advanced cases, however, in which 

 the fatty degeneration is complete, recovery is impossible. 



In case of rigid closure of the mouth of the womb the only resort is 

 dilatation. This is far more difficult and uncertain in the cow than 

 in the mare. The neck of the womb is longer, is often tortuous in its 

 course, and its walls so approximated to each other and so rigid that 

 it may be all but impossible to follow it, and there is always danger 

 of perforating its walls and opening into the cavity of the abdomen, 

 or short of that of causing inflammation and a new rigid fibrous for- 

 mation which on healing, leaves matters worse than before. The 

 opening must be carefully made with the finger, and when that has 

 entered the womb further dilatation may be secured by inserting a 

 sponge tent or by careful stretching with a mechanical dilator. (PI. 

 XX, fig. 6.) 



