THE BEST MANNER OF TREATING SCAB.

Otago Witness, Issue 714, 5 August 1865, Page 15

THE BEST MANNER OF TREATING SCAB.

Sheep are cured of scab by ridd'ng them of the scab acari (and of its eggs\ the result of whose presence on that animal are those symptoms and consequences which are known as " scab."

The conditions practically neoes^ary to the cure of scab are now so well known, and have been so fully and frequently tested, that without affirming that science holds in store no better remedy for that disease, or that better remedies are not at this moment known, it may at all events be considered to be established that a cure may saftly be calculated on by any one who will take advantage of what is well known on the subject. So full and conclusive is the evidence on this head, that it may be inferred, when success has not attended the use of the remedy to which I allude, that some departure from the attendant conditions of success ha 3 taken place ; in other words, that the failure is referable, not to the inefficiency of the dressing, but to its misapplication. Indeed the knowledge of how to cure scab is not the real difficulty in Victoria. The difficulty lies in persuading sheep-owners to reduce their knowledge to practice ; to do themselves what they would recommend with full confidence to another ; to go to the expense which they know is necessary to insure a cure ; to condense into a few weeks, with the object of cleaning their sheep, the outlay which has habitually been spread over the year for the purpose of merely keeping the wool on their backs; aud to disregard some exceptional eases in which fortunate results have been obtained by means which have, as a rule, been found to be inadequate.

Before speaking of the ingredients which of late years may be said to have constituted the favorite antidote to scab in this colony, it may be premised that scab has been cured occasionally (in one instance to a very great extent) by a great variety of remedies; but experience has proved that iv practice these remedies were found to be either too costly, injurious to the sheep or its fleece, or to entail with their employment some other drawback which has prevented them from being generally used. It may also be noticed that, from difficulty in application, ingre-

dients with which a score or two of sheep, badly scabbed, have been cured, have failed of success when they have come to be applied on a larger scale. Under these heads may be instanced corrosive sublimate, sulphur, kerosene, arsenic, salt, fat well rubbed into the skin (a remedy which has been a good deal used in France), a decoction of green gum-trcs leaves, turpentine, and spirits of tar, to which may be added a host of what may have been, termed scab specifics, none of which, up to this moment, have, realised the results expected from them.

We now come to the curs of scab, as at present practised by those who have had most success in the matter. Without detaining the reader with a description of sheep-) ards, toilers, draining-yards, pumps, crutches, dipping- tanks, &c. (which are in such general use that any one, with very little trouble, may make himself more fully conversant with their nature and arrangement by actual inspection than be would be likely to do from reading the best description of them), it may be well to remark that the uldmite success of dipping depends very much on the appliances or plant with which it is ti> be carried out, since there are conditions attached to the dipping, dependent on such conveniences, as essential to a cure as the ingredients themselves of which the dress-ing-stuff is composed; and that to neglect to provide proper conveniences is to jeopardise the result of the dressing.