SALT FOR SHEEP.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 118, 19 July 1873, Page 8

SALT FOR SHEEP.

The following extract on the above subject is from Mr Farrer’s Grass and Sheep Farming, a work recently published in Sydney. Liverpool or sea salt he considers best for animals Common salt (sodie-chloride) is perhaps one of the most valuable of the complementary food stuffs. Its presence is needed in almost all of the most valuable fluids of the body which are.concerned in digestion ; it furnishes the hydrochloric acid of the gastie juice, and the soda of the bile ; “ it is needed for the conservation of the organic compounds of the blood in their normal condition and in this way is most valuable in preventing morbid changes, which give rise to disease,

it hardens, and renders the muscular an a i other tissues tense, and gives vigorou tone to the health and system ; in this way it counteracts any ill effects that may arise from an excess of potash salts in the sheep’s food. I will, first of all, give the data which were obtained from the sheep farmers themselves. I may mention that I found very great difficulty in getting reliable information from them at all, from the fact that in the majority of instances curative properties were expected from salt, which it does not possess, at any rate for fluke ; and strong conclusions adverse to the use of it were formed because it did not succeed in effecting a cure. It was only by sifting these conclusions by means of questions that I have succeeded in satisfying myself of the truth of these data. Inquiries among sheep farmers have led me to the following conclusions :—• (a) Salt possesses no property of curing fluke after it has once reached the liver ; the use of it may, indeed, prove beneficial to the sheep’s general health and strength, and by that means may prevent the fluke from going ahead ; but if the fluke has once reached the liver the salt never succeeds in reaching it, or, by that means, in killing it. (b) Whenever the sheep has been kept constantly supplied with salt from the day when he first began to eat grass, he has been virtually exempt from fluke. I do not say that those who have given salt in this way never have a single sheep affected with fluke ; but, from what I can learn, their losses from fluke have become merely nominal. This is shown to be the case in the salt bush country, where there are often swampy places in abundance that would serve as fluke-harbors, since the sheep that have been bred there never suffer from fluke ; the only reason for this state of things, that we can see, is that the presence of salt in the vegetation causes the sheep to have salt enough'from the day when he first begins to eat grass. The abundant presence of salt in the intestinal canal is hostile to almost all intestinal parasites ; but it is only hostile to parasitic worms which it cannot immediately reach, because it gives a vigor to the health that is unfavorable to their development and existence withinthebody. If, instead of getting food seasoned with salt, as well as having the salt-cellar at table to take as much salt from as we may wish for, we had to get all our salt by lielung a piece of rock salt; and if, moreover, there were several others behind us, who were impatiently pushing us out of the way in order to have their turn at the piece of rock-salt, I think that it is very likely that wo should not get salt enough for our health, and that Many more of us would suffer from worms than do now—some of us might, perhaps, even suffer from fluke.