Report 011 Liver-Rot. 
1G7 
stripped from rotten sheep. Mr. Miles, of Keyham, farms 
upwards of (iOO acres ; despite good feeding, all his flock are 
tainted, and have to be hurried out at what they will fetch. 
Mr. Joseph Roe, Scraptoft, was careful not to put his sheep 
on his flooded meadows. Nevertheless he found that in 187*J 
many were fluked ; 55 were lost. In 1879, and still more in 
the subsequent year, condition and flesh so quickly disappeared, 
that few made 2()s. each. Mr. Thomas Carver, Six Hills, 
Leicester, occupies 350 acres of upland well-drained land, on 
portions of which, howev^er, the water frequently stands for 
several days. His 150 breeding ewes, although they have been 
living on roots, are distinctly affected. 
Mr. Charles Bland, of Gaddesby, ten miles from Leicester, 
under date 14th February, 1881, reported that : " liver-rot is much 
more prevalent amongst sheep this year than it was last. The 
older sheep in 1879 were carried off, but more recently old and 
young suffer alike. Several farmers in this neighbourhood have 
lost the whole of their flocks. On the uplands the sheep are 
affected as much as on the lowlands ; but on land recently seeded, 
the cases of rot are less numerous, and the sheep do better. 
" For several years we have kept W elsh sheep on this estate, 
and all have been affected with liver-rot on their arrival here ; 
we ascertained this by killing, for the use of the Hall, several a 
short time after purchasing them. 
" We attribute the prevalence of liver-rot to the successive wet 
seasons, which have changed the nature of the herbage ; de- 
stroying the fine kinds of grass, and encouraging the growth of 
other injurious kinds. 
" For several years we have bought heifers two and a-half and 
three years old, from the county of Kerry, to kill for the use of 
the Hall. When we buy them, there are generally a few in 
better condition than the rest ; these we push forward to kill as 
early as possible. Sometimes we have killed one within a 
month of its arrival here, and have always found the liver very 
rotten, either with flukes or ulcers — mostly the former. This 
has always been the case with the earlier killed — that is, those 
we have had only a short time. The longer we keep them the 
more the livers improve ; the ulcers disappear, but the livers 
are never entirely free from flukes. 
" A farmer in an adjoining parish is losing all his young 
calves, which were reared last summer ; their livers are full of 
flukes, and he cannot imagine the cause of their being so 
affected. Calves that are housed do not suffer. 
" A pig was killed at Rolleston, Leicestershire, one day this 
week ; its liver was found to be as full of flukes and as diseased 
as that of any rotten sheep." 
