A common attitude observed when sheep are afflicted with twisted stomach worms. The animal loses in flesh, and unless relief is found in time, dies. The parasite is shown in the illustration.]
But no sheep owner should feel wholly satisfied by preventive treatment of stomach worms. Twice a year the whole flock should be drenched with some agent which will destroy the mature worms. There are two very inexpensive drenches which will quite effectually do this. The one is gasoline, the other coal tar creosote. The objection to gasoline is that it needs to be so extremely carefully used or sheep will be killed by it. The dose is 1 tablespoonful (never more at one dose) to a mature sheep; mix with not less than 4 tablespoonfuls of raw linseed oil (never boiled oil); then add a half pint of sweet milk. In giving, set the sheep up on its haunches and shake the liquids well together until the last minute it is administered, or the gasoline will separate and, if it enters the stomach in the unmixed form, it will seriously injure and may kill the sheep.
There is no direct vermifuge that will as effectually kill all species of worms in a sheep’s stomach and intestines as will gasoline; yet the coal tar creosote or the more refined class of sheep dips, if given after a full 12-hour fast, before the flock is turned to pasture in the spring, and again about November, will destroy a large number of the mature worms. All lambs born in April or May should be drenched about August or September following, to be certain of ridding them of worms that may later cause their death. The dose of any of the sheep dips is a dessertspoonful mixed in a full pint of water.
=STONE IN BLADDER.=--See Concretions or Calculi of Urinary Organs.
=STRANGLES.=--This trouble, commonly called colt distemper, affects horses, and rarely mules and donkeys. It is such an infectious disease that nearly all horses contract the disease when colts and usually remain immune to future exposures. The cause is a very small organism or germ which enters the system when a healthy colt comes in contact with a diseased one or when fed and watered in infected vessels. The seat of trouble is largely restricted to the respiratory organs, occasionally causing difficulty in breathing, owing to swelling in region of throat or to accumulations in air passages.