WORMS IN HORSES.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1211, 17 May 1895, Page 6

WORMS IN HORSES.

Amongst horses of all ages, but especially colts and fillies, there are few greater drawbacks to perfect health than some varieties of worms. Although not dangerous, the animal which happens to be their victim cannot thrive much, and often the presence of the worm is unsuspected. To abandon all forms of independent life and to attach itself to a higher organism for the sake of securing an easy subsistence is the part that the worm has to play, and horses are very liable to play the part of hosts to a somewhat numerous family of internal parasites, including both the flat and round worms. There are several varieties of the former, all of which are interesting, but generally have no significance as causes of disease.

Colts and fillies grazed on rotting lands sometimes take up the larvse of the fluke, as do sheep and cattle, but unless a considerable number are swallowed, or the animals are in weak health, no serious effect usually follows. Cases of colts dying of a disease in all respects like fluke rot of the sheep have been known, but, as a rule, horse 3 and cattle, although they are not exempt from the invasion of the fluke, do not suffer in consequence to anything like the same extent as sheep. Round worms, are well represented in the intestines and stomach of the horse. The different hots inhabit the stomach as temporary parasites while undergoing the development necessary to fit them for an independent life, when they attain the perfect insect state 3 and it is true of them that they generally pass the few months of their captivity without making their intrusion felt, or, indeed, known, until they begin to quit their habitation for the outer world, which they will soon inhabit as perfect insects. From time to time cases of perforation of the stomach by bots have been reported, but under ordinary conditions bots do not cause any injury beyond the loss of the fluids which they consume, and it is known that they are found hanging in clusters from the interior of the stomach in healthy horses.

In the beginning of summer the larvge quit their hold of the mucous membrane to which they attach themselves, and are expelled. When they are seen in the dung it is often con-

sidered desirable to give some sort of worm powders, and as the bots come away day by day, as they do when their time arrives to seek a new habitat, the remedy obtains the credit of effecting what is a perfectly natural process. It is said premature expulsion of bots cannot be secured, as no medicine has been found which will compel them to quit their hold. A very large round worm (Ascaris megalocephalus) infests the intestines, sometimes in enormous numbers, occasioning some irritation arid perhaps diarrhoea. Attacks of coiic are sometimes attributed to the presence of this worm, and it is easy to understand how their movements in the intestines may cause spasmodic contraction of the muscular coats of the canal, attended with pain.

More serious are the effects caused, by two varieties of strongles—the Strongylus armatus and Strongylus tetracanthus. The adult worms, which vary from one to two inches in length, bury their eggs in the mucous membranes, and the young worms form small red nodules in the ccecum and parts of the colon. Emerging from these nests, some of the young worms enter the blood vessels and cause aneurism in different arteries. Others remain in the intestinal canal and excite inflammation, which in many cases has ended fatally, in colts particularly. The intestines of the liorse also harbour another round worm which is known as the whip worm (oxyuris), from the long lash-like appendage which extends from the body. This structure is really the neck of the worm, although it is not unnaturally looked upon the ordinary observer as the tail, which it certainly most resembles. The oxyuris infests the terminal part of the intestinal canal, and lays its eggs on the exterior of the gut, where they may be seen as a yellow powder round the anus on horses which are infested by the worm.

Medicines for the expulsion of round worms are numerous enough-; turpentine is a favourite remedy in doses of to loz., mixed with four to eight times the quantity of linseed oil. An oldfashioned system of treatment by mercury and antimony was at one time popular and fairly successful when it was properly carried out. A ball containing half a drachm of calomel and the same quantity of tartarised antimony was given every morning from three to six days, and was immediatelyfollowed by a dose of aloes, four or five drachms. Immense numbers of ascarides were often expelled by this treatment. Perhaps the most easily applied and simple plan of treatment is the one proposed by the late Dr Cobbold— i.e., 15 grains of santonine in a ball, with three drachms of aloes. This dose is to be repeated in four or fiye days. Another cure, and a pietty safe one, which has been tried with colts and fillies, is to give them a good quantity of warm milk. The milk is said to burst the worms. Treatment of tapeworm need not be considered, so far as the horse is concerned, as the varieties of that worm which infest the animal are apparently not injurious, and, further, do not give any indication of their presence. —Scottish Farmer.