ILLINOIS DAIRYMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 93 



DISCUSSION. 



Mr. Lespinasse : Before this convention adjourns, I want to call the 

 attention of those here to the great importance of keeping the agricultural 

 press properly patronized, and I can say it more openly, that I have no interest 

 whatever in any publication. I am requested to say, by one of the publishers 

 of one of our agricultural papers, the Prairie Farmer, that they offer $100,00, 

 which will be distributed according to some announcement in the paper, for the 

 best essays on practical dairying, furnished by subscribers to the paper. I 

 believe it is our duty, and a duty that we will find profitable, not only so far as 

 it will support the newspaper, but also as far as it will enlighten your minds. 



DISCUSSION ON MILK FEVER. 



Mr. Dubois: I want to find out whether there is any preventative of milk 

 fever, or in case there is an attack, whether there is any cure. I have lost one 

 very valuable cow with it this season; then I had two more that were coming 

 in, in hot weather, on grass, and I shut those up about two weeks on dry feed, 

 and the first one was all right; next one was treated in the same way and I lost 

 her. I had still another taken with it, but not so severely, and we succeeded 

 in saving her. 



Mr. Boyd: I have had considerable experience, but I have not found any 

 remedy, and I do not know anybody that has. I understand that some gentle- 

 men have succeeded in curing cows with a concoction of kerosene oil, lard and 

 new milk — about a pint of kerosene oil, three pints of lard and a sufficient 

 quantity of new milk to make an emulsion. That ought to be given as soon as 

 the cow is first taken and repeated in about two hours; then again in two hours. 

 I think there is something in it. It comes from good authority — as good 

 authority as Major Campbell Brown, of Tennessee. He reports that in two 

 cases he had immediate relief. The aconite remedy has been tried in many 

 cases, but always failed. The first symptoms I have noticed are a kind of 

 staggering, partial paralysis and immediately afterwards they fall down, and 

 never get up until they die or get well. I relieved my cows considerably by 

 keeping ice on their heads between the horns. There was a cow at the Fat 

 Stock Show that dropped a calf, and she died in about thirty-six hours. They 

 had all the skill of the veterinary profession in the city, but they do not seem 

 to know anything about the disease. It is always the good conditioned cows 

 that are taken with this sickness, and the best milkers. A good many people 

 believe in giving a dose of salts as soon as the calf is dropped as a preventative. 

 I think the remedy for this disease is in preventing it, not in curing it. Dry 

 feed is constipating — it is not good under such circumstances. Timothy hay is 

 very indigestible. I think they should be fed loose and cooling feed, something 

 that will loosen instead of constipating the bowels. 



Mr. Lawrence: I saw in an English agricultural periodical some time 

 ago it was recommended that cows that were fleshy, and that those that were 

 subject to the disease, that they be bled a few days before they dropped their 

 calves. 



Mr. Stockwell: I lost a cow last summer with the milk fever, and a few 

 days afterwards I was talking with a dairyman from Rockford, and he said 



