The Station.

Otago Witness, Issue 1243, 25 September 1875, Page 18

The Station.

THE FLUKE. Mr C. Franklin, of Ecliuca, -writes to the Australasian, in reference to this disease : —

" These last twelve months or more a good deal, I notice, has been written and said about fluke in sheep. Some have been trying experiments, thinking they could effect a cure ; none, as yet, has been found effectual. My experience, of which I have had considerable in England, inclines me to say there is no cure, unless it be by the butcher's knife. I believe there are means by which sheep suffering badly from fluke may be made very fat ; but in this country, where the price of mutton is so low, and flocks so large, it would not pay to tiy on a large scale, labour and feeding stuff being too dear. In England, where you can sell fat mutton at lOd per lb., and get good labour at 12s per week, and all feeding proportionately low, it is better to try than allow them to die. I have had cheep ao bad with fluke, and so weak they could scarcely walk, and yet become veiy fat. My plan was this : to place some 50 or 60 in a large covered shed, and feed them every day on cut turnips and mangels, with bruised corn and oilcvke, meadow hay, and a good suj>ply of b tit. The sheep is an animal that thrives best on high and dry land. That which causes fluke is a succession of wet seasons and where sheep are kept on low, marshy lands, with the vegetation at certain times very rapid. I imagine most of the flaky sheep in this colony came from such districts as named above ; and with seasons like the few last we have had, it will be always liable. A succession of dry seasons, and we Bhould hear little of it. • In all the accounts I have read, little has been stated as to the general appearance of the liver. There is another disease oftentimes very fatal to sheep feeding on low and wet lauds ; this is termed rot, or bane. When killed, a sheep suffering from this would have its liver considerably enlarged, and so rotten that you could, with a slight pressure, make it into a pulp ; and yet that sheep may be very fat. A c<ld and wet winter always tells its tale on fluky sheeD, or sheep suffering from any disease of the liver. I know graziers in England who every year buy sound sheep and put them on rich, low lands in July to fatten till October ; they then take them off to market for the butcher fat, and the livers of every one would be more or less rotten ; the meat is considered none the worse.