216 
Anaimia in Sheep. 
of roots alone, are proper or sufficient food for pregnant animals. 
Neither of these are calculated to fulfil the requirements of 
breeding-ewes at this most critical period, while their exclusive 
use is certain to show itself most disastrously at the period of 
lambing, affecting both the mother and progeny. The former 
are liable through such errors in dieting, not only to suffer from 
this most fatal affection — anaemia, — with exhaustion and organic 
disease of the liver, but also from many other disturbances, such as 
cerebral congestion, fatal bowel-affections, abortion, and rupture 
of the muscular walls of the abdomen, with others, not less trouble 
some, confined to the generative organs. The latter chiefly 
exhibit the deleterious effects of the defective nutrition to which 
they have been subjected during intra-uterine life, in various 
manifestations of disturbance in the process of tissue-develop 
ment. The chief of these is the peculiar arthritic disease 
of lambs known as "joint ill," " scholl," &c. — which sometimes 
conjmits such havoc in our sheep-breeding districts ; again 
dropsy of the abdomen, with destructive changes in the nave 
cord and liver, frequent accompaniments of the former state : a 
pernicious form of diarrhoea, and general want of tone and 
vigour of the whole system. 
I am well aware that it seems folly, with so much grass as is 
frequently to be obtained during mild winters, to think of 
giving artificial food in any amount, and more so when turnips 
are plentiful ; while, if chemical analysis is resorted to for 
information, we are told that the winter-grown grass is only 
inferior to the best July samples, in so far as it contains 10 per 
cent, more water, the other flesh-forming and heat-producing 
materials being in no way diminished. Practical experience 
however, tells us that the results of feeding upon these two 
varieties are very different, and that with pregnant animals such 
foods may not be extensively employed with impunity. We 
cannot, however, secure the ends desired by merely giving 
breeding-ewes extra food upon full and luxuriant winter pastures 
until such have been considerably eaten, because these animal 
prefer this rank herbage, when they can obtain it, to any othe 
kind of food. It is desirable, and by far the safer system o 
procedure, that the pastures upon which it is intended to keep 
breeding-ewes during the middle and later periods of gesta- 
tion be " run up," z.e., eaten bare ; and that upon these the 
animals in this condition be allowed a certain amount of mixed 
chopped hay and straw, with, in special cases, a small pro- 
portion of cake or corn with bran — in fact, almost any 
kind of extra food — so that they shall not be entirely dependent 
upon, or even permitted to have, an unlimited allowance of fresh 
grass grown during the winter season on good lands in high 
