INFECTIVE GASTROENTERITIS IN CAI/VES, LAMBS 

 AND FOALS. WHITE SCOUR. 



Causes : early life, exclusive activity of fourth stomach, faulty milk, ab- 

 sence of colostrum, milk from advanced lactation, milk of other genus, or 

 altered by excitement, or unwholesome food, excess on hungry stomach, 

 soured, fermented, feverish milk, putrid milk, leucomaines, overdistension 

 of stomach, farinaceous food, hair balls, morning and evening milk, milk 

 after first calf, composition of milk by genus, ruminant's milk to mono- 

 gastric animal, infectious microbes — bacilli, micrococci. Symptoms : cos- 

 tiveness, inappetence, listlessness, tense abdomen, acid eructations, foetid 

 diarrhoea, becoming yellow or white, general foetor, staring coat, pallid 

 mucosae, tucked up tender abdomen, weakness, emaciation, fever, bloating, 

 frothy dejections, arthritis, peritonitis, pneumonitis, hepatitis, ophthalmia, 

 laminitis, etc. Mortality : in foals, calves, lambs. Lesions : gastric and 

 intestinal congestions, exudations, necrosis, incoagulable blood in foals, 

 anaemia. Prevention : normal feeding, expulsion of meconium, care of 

 nurse, adapt composition of cow's milk to genus of nursling, warmth, lime 

 water, rubber teat, Pasteurizing, disinfection, separation from infected 

 animals and places, breed from robust parents. Treatment : elimination, 

 antiseptics, boiling milk, rennet, ipecacuan, carminatives, astringents, tar, 

 calomel and chalk, gum, flaxseed, elm bark. 



Causes. The abomasum in the adult is protected against dis- 

 order, by the normal activity of the first three stomachs, macera- 

 ting the food, presiding over the second and more perfect masti- 

 cation, grinding it between the omasal folds into a finely attenu- 

 ated pulp and delaying its progress so that it arrives at the fourth 

 stomach at short intervals and in small quantities only at a time. 

 It follows that this organ is rarely involved in serious disorder 

 unless as the result of the ingestion of poisons, or of excess of 

 water, or from the presence of parasites. In the very young 

 ruminant, however, the condition is reversed, the first three 

 stomachs are as yet undeveloped, and incapable of receiving 

 more than the smallest quantity of food or of retaining the same, 

 and the abomasum alone is functionally active and receives at 

 once practically everything that may be swallowed. In the first 

 few weeks of life therefore the ruminant is exposed to almost the 

 same dangers, from overloading, indigestion, inflammation and 

 poisoning as is the monogastric animal. For the time, indeed, 

 the undeveloped ruminant is in its physiological and pathological 

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