FOOTROT IN SHEEP

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLV, Issue 21090, 16 July 1938, Page 18

FOOTROT IN SHEEP

To the Editor of ' I’lie I’linaru Keraid Sir,—The interesting letter from Mr W. D. Blair, District Superintendent of the Live Stock Division of the Department of Agriculture which was read at the last monthly meeting of the Geraldine branch of the Farmers’ Union was noteworthy in that it is an indication of the Department's increasing interest in what I have frequently referred to as the Cinderella of stock diseases. Notwithstanding the fact that footrot in sheep is easily the most painful disease from which our domestic animals suffer, is highly contagious and the direct and indirect cause of enormous economic loss each year very little indeed has been done to control it in the past and even otherwise well informed persons were so uninformed regarding the mass of information on the subject that has been accumulated as a result of the most careful and

painstaking investigaffon and experiment in Europe and America during the last 150 years, that I have frequently been told that the disease is not actually contagious. As for stamping it right out of the country altogether in the same manner as we have scab (which disease, by the way. still exists in the flocks in the Old Country), pleura pneumonia, swine fever and anthrax the idea hardly got a hearing at all when I first brought it forward. However. I am pleased to say that the present Minister of Agriculture, the Hon. Mr Lee Martin, is fully alive to the seriousness of the matter and has informed me that it is his intention to introduce legislation during the current session of Parliament to enable it to be dealt with. I enclose a copy of a letter I addressed to the Department over a year ago in reply to one from them, which mity be of some interest i j the farming community, if you can spare the space for its publication.—l am. etc.. S. P. BRAY. Sherwood Downs. July 14. I Enclosure.! (Copy of letter addressed to the head of the Live Stock Division of the Department of Agriculture, May. 1937) i "You say inter alia that footrot cannot be attributed to any one organism. This I should say speaking from practical experience is certainly correct. A similar instance is seen with regard to the different forms of influenza, common, gastric, and epidemic, but still the organisms are probably closely related and require much the same treatment for elimination from the system. I think Professor James Law. of the Cornell University, Ithaca, United States of America, was the | first to prove this as near as I can tell about 1876. so that this is perhaps no new discovery. You say that investigation is proceeding but that progress is naturally slow and state further that one of the leading investigators in Australia holds the view that | pastures are only infective for two or three weeks after diseased stock have been moved therefrom. May I say with all respect that it is most disheartening that valuable time should be utterly wasted in “discovering” by a slow process of investigation, facts that the most careful and scientific investigation proved beyond all doubt at least 100 years ago. In the “Sheep Doctor,” published about 40 odd years ago, the author, George Armitage. M.R.C.V.S.. makes such statements as the following: ‘The contagious nature of the disease has long been contended for by Continental veterinarians,’ and he makes particular reference to Professors law and Brown, C.B. The literature of the subject abounds with interesting details, with special reference to the communicability of the disease, which was first described by Chabert according to Professor Law in 1791, while Picket writing in 1805 was the first to give the results of experiments. proving the very great contagiousness of it. Fabre proved by experiment that by simply placing diseased matter on the coronet of sound sheep 21 out of 32 contracted the disease, while Professor Brown drew the following conclusions from his experiments: (1) The infective matter because active when brought in contact with the skin between the claw or when’ introduced into the system by inoculation; (2) footrot cannot be produced by keeping sheep on undrained moist soils with an abundant coarse and wet herbage or on wet and rotten litter and manure; (3) animals exposed to these conditions for many months and resisting entirely the influences named above, contracted footrot in from fourteen to twenty-one days on being placed among sheep suffering from the disease. “Sorillon records a case where the disease was again and again produced by cohabitation and checked even in the infected flock by segregation. In Missouri, United States of America, a violent outbreak which occurred some 70 or 80 years ago was brought under • control and finally the disease was completely stamped out by segregation and by the rather drastic measure of cutting the throats of affected sheep ‘thus extinguishing the virus with the extinction of life. “Before I had read very much on the subject I was personally in a position owing to long experience and observation to endorse all that these investigators of from 50 to 150 years ago discovered, nor am I by any means alone in this. If footrot had not been consistently treated in the past as the Cinderella of stock diseases I am sure that what some of us have succeeded quite well in doing for our own flocks would have been done long before this on a national scale and one of the most contagious, costly and painful of animal

diseases effectively stamped out, if only on humanitarian grounds. It is probably because like toothache footrot is rarely directly fatal, that it has been neglected but where footrot is present the lowered vitality of the sheep not only makes them an easy prey to other diseases but unthrifty sheep will not give either a good clip or a good lamb- ‘ ing. It is hard to compute the total I annual direct and indirect loss due to I this one disease but it must be I enormous. | "Surely, sir, something should be I done to control the spread of so serious | a malady. We have all the possible inj formation required regarding the cause, , nature, spread, and treatment of it and both recent and old experiments have proved conclusively that segregation of diseased sheep and protection from contagium alone will lead to its complete elimination. “I am enclosing a letter from Mr ( ) as I think you will find it interesting. Mr ( ) and his brother have a flock of about 2400 sheep and have had a bad spin with footrot during the last three years. When I visited them last January they were almost in despair of ever getting it out again, but following my advice to rigidly segregate every affected sheep and while keeping the foot bath going to use Stockholm tar and powdered bluestone on the worst cases, they have already got it well under control with only five severe cases left. Should you wish it I can get evidence of the comparative case with which the disease can be brought under control and finally stamped out on individual farms.” Un his letter to me Mr ( ) gave details of his great success in freeing his large flock of footrot in three or I four months since I had seen him, and I recommended segregations and the tar and bluestone treatment.!