Parturition Fever, Etc. 303 



High Feeding. Heavy and rich feeding prior to calving and 

 immediately after, is a most prominent cause of the affection. 

 This is so well known to owners of milking breeds, that they 

 usually hold to the principle that the cow that is a heavy milker, 

 should be all but starved for a fortnight before calving and for a 

 week after. In herds where this rule is acted on the disease is 

 rare and may be altogether unknown, and when it is neglected the 

 malady is often very destructive. 



Plethora. High Condition. Heavy feeding and high condi- 

 tion usually go together, and the majority of the victims are fat or 

 in good flesh, yet a certain number are actually thin. The 

 predisposing condition is plethora rather than fat or flesh, and 

 this may be present in the comparative absence of flesh. The 

 cow that is from a stock famed as heavy milkers, does not tend to 

 lay on flesh, but, on succulent diet especially, the greater part of 

 the nutritive matter assimilated goes to the production of milk, 

 and she remains thin in flesh no matter how heavily she may be 

 fed. Many such cows never go dry, but give a liberal yield of 

 milk up to the day of calving, and if measures are taken to dry 

 them up, it is done at the expense of a sudden plethora, as the 

 milk giving system does not at once accommodate itself to the 

 laying up of fat and flesh. 



The drying up of the milk secretion sometime before calving in 

 a cow which is normally a heavy milker is therefore a potent factor. 



Parturition is an almost indispensable factor as the disease oc- 

 curs one to seven days after that act, and only in rare and some- 

 what doubtful cases before it. 



Easy Delivery with little nervous outlay or loss of blood, and 

 no exhaustion is a special feature. The attack almost never oc- 

 curs after a dif&cult parturition with considerable loss of blood 

 and much nervous exhaustion. This should to a large extent 

 exclude such alleged factors as shock or wearing out of nervous 

 energy. The nervous prostration which figures so prominently 

 in the disease, seems to be less the result of wear and tear, than 

 of the supply of an excess of blood, which is either over- 

 enriched, or charged with some injurious toxic matter. At the 

 same time there is a manifest susceptibility at the parturient 

 period which is not present at other times, and the plethora or 

 toxin takes occasion to operate when this predisposition renders 



