ACORNS

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 52, Issue 3750, 1 May 1936, Page 2

ACORNS

POISONING OF STOCK PREVENTION AND TREATMENT A number of cases of the poisoning of stock by acorns having been reported, the following has been contributed specially for the News:— The fruit of the oak (Ouercus robur and Ouercus sessili flora) which in former generations afforded employment for children and food for pigs, is now more often a scourge than a blessing to the owner of cattle. The labour of gathering, under modern conditions, costs more than the acorns are worth, and thus it happens that in a prolific year cattle eat too many, and suffer from a form of indigestion which not infrequently proves fatal. In other cases, they so sicken a beast that any prospect of ultimate profit on his feeding is out of the question. Cows become unprofitable and sometimes abort, though they more frequently obtain attention in time, owing to the sudden diminution in the milk yield. Young animals suffer more severely than the mature.

Symptoms: These are not easily distinguished from infection of the omasum (second stomach) until the disease has made some progress. The affected animal deserts its fellows, or if without Company does not come to the call of its usual attendant; is dull and depressed, as shown by hanging head and drooping ears; there is a disposition to a gummy discharge about the nostrils. Obstinate constipation Is present, and appears to be due rather to a paralysed condition of the canal than to accumulations of hardened material. The dung is found to contain the broken coverings of acorns, but the solid portions are rarely seen. A staggering gait indicates the poisonous influence upon the brain and spinal cord; delerium may occur before death, although a comatose condition is the more general.

It Is known that tannin is the astringent principal of acorns, as of the bark of the oak tree; the distortion of the red corpuscles of the blood correspond to that noted In tannic acid poisoning.

Treatment, unless at an early is of comparatively little value, no remedies availing when the wasting period has been reached. Strong purgatives, such as aloes and salts, combined with an ounce or more of bicarbonate of soda, or potash, may be advised wheh the trouble is first not'iced, and one should not be deceived by a false diarrhoea, which in this malady, as in Infection of the third stomach (omasum), indicates only the fermentation of alimentary matter finding vent by means of a thin lane running through a bowel often packed with hardened material.

To restore the power of digestion and give tone to the stomach and intestines, a course of nux-vomica and soda, with gentian or calumba, may be recdmmended.

Preventive measures consist in col. lecting acorns, especially In the early autumn, the unripe or immature fruit first found upon the ground having apparently more of the objectionable principal than the later fruit. This latter statement is a matter of experience.