294 SHEEP FARMING IN AMERICA. 



When it is filled with these tiny worms diges- 

 tion is wonderfully disturbed and the lamb 

 loses tone, the wool appears dead, the skin loses 

 its pinkness, the appetite is deranged. The 

 lamb may scour and may be constipated. It 

 eats earth or rotten wood, in the latter stages 

 of the disease. There may come a dropsical 

 swelling beneath the under jaw. This is not a 

 disease, only a symptom ,of the disease. 



Depend upon it, if it is May, or from then 

 till October, and your lambs are droopy, lan- 

 guid, their wool dead looking, their skins 

 chalky, they ha,ve stomach worms. Just catch 

 one and kill it, dissect it at once and examine 

 the fourth stomach with care. You will surely 

 see there the little writhing serpents that do 

 the mischief. 



These worms inhabit old sheep too, but do 

 not do to them so much harm. The life history 

 is like this: The worms become mature in the 

 body of the oMer sheep and pass out, laden 

 with eggs about to hatch. The little worms do 

 something, we do not know what, to get back 

 into the sheep again. Maybe they crawl up a 

 little way on the grass. Tlie lambs come along 

 and nibbling close on tender grass where the 

 ewes' excrements have been dropped take in 

 the worms. They mature in the lamb and raise 

 havoc there as we have said. 



Now cold weather either numbs or destroys 

 these worms, so that there is no danger of in- 

 fection in winter, late fall or early spring. 



Elsewhere, in management, the prevention of 

 stomach worms is described. Here we will con- 



