PRAIRIE SHEEP DISEASES. 255 



wool as soon as practicable after shearing. The clip 

 generally remains in the barn a few days, and if not sold, is 

 sacked and sent to some eastern city market. 



Ticks. — Prairie sheep generally suffer but little trouble 

 from ticks,, because they are kept in high condition the year 

 round. But wherever these parasites obtain a foothold, they 

 should be promptly exterminated. 



Prairie Diseases.^ — Scab is by far the most formidable 

 disease of sheep on the prairies, owing to its highly contagious 

 character and to the labor it costs to eradicate it from large 

 flocks running together. My attention has also been very 

 frequently called by Texas correspondents to some minor 

 forms of cutaneous disease, believed also to be infectious, 

 which prevail in that State. Both of these maladies, and 

 their proper treatment, will be considered in a subsequent 

 portion of this work. Hoof-rot, the greatest scourge of the 

 flocks of New England, New York, etc., does not yet appear 

 to establish itself on the prairies. It is claimedi and no doubt 

 is true, that flocks to some degree affected with this disease 

 in the Eastern States, on being driven to the prairies lose all 

 traces of it. That this is true in respect to sheep taken to 

 the Southern and Southwestern States, I know from my own 

 experience. The hoof-rot was introduced into my flocks 

 about twelve years since, when I was receiving numerous 

 orders for sheep from those States. Having got the disease 

 subdued as far as practicable, for the time, I shipped several 

 lots to Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia, apprising the 

 purchasers of the facts, and making myself responsible for the 

 consequences, by ofifering to refund the purchase money if the 

 sheep should again exhibit the disease. I requested to be 

 informed of their first lameness : and whether lame or not, 

 to be informed of their condition after the lapse of a few 

 months. Not one of the sheep again exhibited a trace of 

 hoof-roty or lameness of any kind ; and their thriftiness was 

 the occasion of especial remark. Before I exterminated the 

 disease from my flocks, t, in like manner, sent colonies^ to 

 nearly or quite every Southern State, except Florida, to aU 

 the Southwestern States, and the Indian Territory on the 

 headwaters of the, Arkansas, and always with the same result. 



I am disposed to attribute this immunity from the disease 

 in the South to the dry, sandy, permeable character of the 

 soils, and to the dust which the sheep's foot constantly comes 



