DISEASES OP THE GENERATIVE ORGANS. 147 



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 degeneration 

 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. (PL 

 XX, fig. 6.) 



STERILITY FROM OTHER CAUSES. 



The questions as to whether a bull is a sure stock getter and whether 

 a cow is a breeder are so important that it would be wrong to pass 

 over other prominent causes of sterility. Breeding at too early an age 

 is a common source of increasing weakness of constitution which has 

 obtained in certain breeds. Jerseys have especially been made the 

 victims of this mistake, the object being to establish the highest milk- 

 ing powers in the smallest obtainable body which will demand the 

 least material and outlay for its constant repair of waste. With suc- 

 cess in this line there has been the counterbalancing disadvantage of 



