LUNG-DISEASE IN LIMBS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1650, 7 July 1883, Page 14

LUNG-DISEASE IN LIMBS.

Mr J. C. Buckland (Waikouaiti) writes : — Now that lung-disease in lambs has at last reached Otago and Canterbury, you would confer an obligation on many of your country readers by publishing the following extract from the letter of a gentleman in Napier . Anyone who could furnish as complete a cure for rabbits would indeed be a benefactor to his country : — " I duly received your wire re ' lung worms,' and thought that it would be better to send you a few simple directions by letter. " In the first place, if you have any doubt of the existence of the wprm in any young sheep, 1 should advise you to kill a weak one — one that you hear coughing — look in the extreme point of the lung, and also in the air-passages for worms like white cotton threads. You must examine carefully, for even in an animal nearly dying of lung rot caused by the worm, it is sometimes difficult to discover them. . . They destroy the lungs by feeding on the soft tissues. In death you find the animal lying easily, but with the head thrown back, and a little white foam on the nostrils. Male lambs appear to suffer more than female, but not always. Scouring sets in before death. "Now for our mode of treatment. In the earlier stages, and before the worm has left the air-passages, fumigating with sulphur is a cure ; but after the worm is buried in the tissue of the lung I do not think it is effective. Then recourse must be had to something that affects the blood, and we find that turpentine is the best remedy. "The simplest way to fumigate is to build a close-sided pen to hold, say, 50 lambs, and have a nailcan in the centre fenced round so that the sheep cannot knock it over. The fumes are generated by throwing a handful of flour of sulphur on shavings burning in the can, and must be retained by covering the pen with a tarpaulin, which must be kept over the lamb for about five minutes. Do not on any account use charcoal, or allow embers to accumulate. The fumes caused by sulphur and charcoal are most poisonous, but with shavings or paper there is no danger, .... " The turpentine cure is a safe one, and I think the best when the lambs are bad. Simply administer one and a-half teaspoonful of turpentine with an equal quantity of raw linseed oil, kept well stirred together. This is best accomplished by having strapped in front of you a can full of the mixture, and with a glass syrup, holding exactly half of the mixture — viz., three teaspoonfuls, squirt it down the lamb's throat. Let a man catch the lamb, set it down, open its mouth, and the trick is done. With two men catching, I have dosed two thousand a day. If the lambs are very bad, repeat treatment in three or four weeks. One or two may die, but you will find that the turpentine and oil will speedily stop the scouring. . . . Lung worm with us is a very serious thing, but I fancy we have mastered it in its present form, and unless it developes some worse features, I think we shall not suffer any serious loss.

" My hoggets this season look splendid — fat and strong, and buck and kick all over the paddocks when disturbed, and yet three months ago they had lung worms very badly. . . One lot was fumigated, and one lot dosed with turpentine and oil. The loss was greatest in the lot fumigated, although they have thriven equally well with the others since. With over six thousand lambs docked my loss has been less than 3 per cent.