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DISEASES OF THE DOMESTIC ANIMALS 



weakness of muscles and deformities of bones. Caused by un- 

 hygienic conditions, improper or insufficient food and impaired 

 physique. When the animal is a suckling, rickets may be caused 

 by disease or improper kind or insufficient amount of mother's food. 

 This is seen in case of lambs and pigs, while foals and calves suffer 

 by reason of disease or exhaustion of mothers. It is not always due 

 to insufficiency of lime salts in food, as sometimes rickets develop on 

 a ration containing all the necessary mineral salts. There appears 

 to be an inability to assimilate mineral salts, from some cause not 

 certainly known. 



Symptoms. — The digestion is impaired, as shown by indiges- 

 tion and symptoms of gastritis and enteritis with poor and irreg- 

 ular appetite. The patient is sluggish through weakness and ten- 

 derness of muscles, which are painful on movement. After a 

 while enlargements and deformities of the joints occur with de- 

 formities of the shafts of the long bones. The spinal column is 

 often bent to the side or downward, and the jaw in pigs and lambs 

 may be misshapen so as to make mastication difficult. Growth is 

 stunted. If much deformity exists it can not be removed. Other- 

 wise prognosis is favorable. 



Treatment. — In the case of sucklings, the mother's food should 

 be improved in nitrogen, fat and salts. Cottonseed or linseed 

 meal and beef meal may be added to a more generous diet of grain 

 for the mother, or the young animal may be weaned and given — if 

 herbivorous — rich milk, eggs, beef meal, milk, gruel of oatmeal and 

 a tablespoonful of linseed meal in milk daily, or cod-liver oil. 

 Carnivora may receive milk, strong broths, gruels with milk, juice 

 squeezed from rare beef, cod-liver oil. 



If anemic, the syrup of ferrous iodide is most useful ; 1 5 drops 

 for calves and foals, 2 to 5 minims for puppiesj Phosphate of 

 lime is a food and phosphorus stimulates the growth of bone. Phos- 

 phorated oil (U. S. P. 1890) may be given to foals and calves in 

 dram doses twice daily — omitting it every other week — to puppies 



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