Infective Gastro- Enteritis in Calves, Lambs and Foals. 139 



relations, a monogastric animal. For this early life therefore 

 whatever applies to the soliped applies equally well to the 

 ruminant. 



When allowed to suck at will from a healthy nurse, which 

 completed its gestation about the time the young animal was 

 born , indigestion is rare. But whatever interferes with the normal 

 supply is liable to cause derangement. The withholding of the 

 first milk — colostrum — the laxative properties of which are 

 es.sential to clear awa5' the intestinal accumulations of foetal life — 

 meconium ; the placing of new-born offspring on the milk of 

 nurses that bore their young many months before ; bringing up 

 of foals on cow's milk ; working, over-driving, hunting, shipping 

 by rail , or otherwise exciting the dams ; allowing too long intervals 

 between the meals — feeding morning and night only, or morning, 

 noon and night, the nurse being kept at work or pasture in the 

 interval ; feeding unwholesome food to the nurse ; bringing up by 

 hand, on cold and even soured milk, or that which has become 

 contaminated by putrid leavings in the unscalded buckets. Some 

 of these causes should be emphasized, for example the milk of 

 excitement and fever, milk that is soured or putrid, and milk 

 suddenly swallowed in excess. The nurse which is fevered or 

 subjected to over-exertion has produced an excess of tissue wa.ste 

 and leucomains which largely escape from the system in the 

 milk. This milk is therefore at times unwholesome and even 

 poisonous. Mares subjected to severe work or that fret much 

 under lighter work, cows carried by car or boat, or driven violently, 

 and any nursing animal which has been thrown into a fever from 

 any cause whatever, is liable to yield toxic milk. This would 

 include the milk of all severe diseases, as being liable to become 

 charged with toxins and ptomaines and thus poison the young 

 animal, which subsists upon it as an exclusive diet, even though 

 the actual pathogenic microbe may not be present in the secretion. 



With regard to fermented milk, that which has been .simply 

 soured, relaxes the bowels and the attendant congestion con- 

 tributes to further derangement and even infection by any patho- 

 genic germ which may be present, or by microbes which are 

 habitually saprophytic, but take occasion to dangerously attack 

 the weakened mucosa. If the milk has undergone putrefaction 

 in the feeding bucket, the co-existence of the septic germ and the 



