368 HOOF -EOT. 



exposure of the unhealthy and cauterized surfaces to water. 

 I venture to say that effect would not he auspicious. In 

 the case of milder applications, which do not immediately cau- 

 terize — and from which different and less instantaneous effects 

 are expected, as, for instance, from blue vitriol — ^tKe immediate 

 and contLoued contact of water washes them off almost before 

 they begin to exert their remedial effects. It is to prevent 

 this that oil and tar are made portions of some of the 

 preceding prescriptions. They will do some good in this 

 way after they dry on the surface of the flesh; but they are 

 wholly inadequate to the end, if the sheep is turned on wet 

 grass immediately after their application. The best place to 

 put sheep after applying the remedies to their feet, is on the 

 naked floors of stables — scattering them over as much surface 

 as practicable, so that there shall be as little accumulation of 

 manure as possible under foot. Straw, especially if fresh 

 littered down, absorbs or rubs off the moist substances 

 which have been applied to their feet. The bottoms of the 

 feet are soon thus cleaned off. A boy should go round 

 with a shovel, until night, taking up the dung as fast as 

 dropped. The sheep should be kept in the stables over the 

 first night, and not let out the next day until the dew is off 

 the grass: then they should be turned on the most closely 

 cropped grass on the farm. It well pays for the trouble to 

 put them in the stables the second night before the dew falls, 

 and to keep them, as before, until it is dried off the next day. 



I have never found that for moderate cases of hoof-rot — 

 the worst ones which are allowed to occur in well managed 

 flocKS — that th-ere is, in reality, any possible beneficial 

 addition to mere blue' vitriol, as a remedy, if it is applied in 

 the most effective way. Twice I have cured a diseased ^oc/c 

 by one application of it — and I never heard of it being done 

 in any other way, or, indeed, on any other occasions. The 

 following paragraph is from my " Sheep Husbandry in the 

 South," published in 1848 : 



" I had a flock of sheep a few years since that were in the 

 second season of the disease. They had been but little 

 lofljsed to during the summer, and as cold weather was setting 

 itLTnany of them were considerably lame — some of them 

 quite so. The snow fell and they were brought into the 

 yards, limping, and hobbling about deplorably. This sight, 

 so digracefiil to me as a farmer, roused me into activity. 

 I bought a quantity of blue vitriol — made the necessary 

 arrangements — and once more took the chair as principal 



