Cattle 1853 - Lewis Family Farm

310 CATTLE.
The carraway and ginger powder are the best aromatics that can be
employed, and will supersede every other : the gentian and ginger,
with Epsom salts, as recommended in page 308, will prove a very
useful tonic and alterative, in cases of " loss of cud" that cannot be
traced to any particular diseased state of the animal, or that seems to
be connected with general debilfty.
INFLAMMATION OF THE RUMEN.
In almost every book on cattle-medicine mention is made of " inflammation
of the stomach ;" and certainly cases do, although but
rarely, occur, in which evident traces of inflammation of the rumen
may be discovered on examination after death. The cuticular coat
is not discolored, but it peels from the mucous coat below at the
slightest touch, and that coat is red and injected. This is particularly
the case when a beast dies soon after apparent recovery from
distension of the stomach by gas, or when he is destroyed by the
accumulation of solid food that could not be removed. It is likewise
found in every case of poisoning, but the symptoms during life are
so obscure that it would be useless to bestow further time on the
consideration of this disease.
Nature has endowed the brute with an acuteness of the various
senses, and with a degree of instinct which, so far as the life and
enjoyment and usefulness of the animal .are concerned, fully compensate
for the lack of the intelligence of the human being. The quadruped
is scarcely born ere he is mysteriously guided, and without
any of the lessons of experience, to the kind of food which affords
him the most suitable nourishment, and he is warned from that which
would be deleterious. There is scarcely a pasture which does not
contain some poisonous plants, yet the beast crops the grass close
around them, without gathering a particle of that which would be
injurious. In the spring of the year, however, and especially after
they have been kept in the stall or the straw -yard during the winter,
and supported chiefly on dry food, as soon as they are turned into
the fields cattle eat greedily of every herb that presents itself, and
frequently are seriously diseased, and sometimes quite poisoned.
They are under the influence of appetite almost ungovernable, and
few plants have then acquired their distinguishing form and color,
and taste and smell. The common and water-hemlock, the water
dropwort, and the yew, are the principal plants that are poisonous to
cattle ; but it is said that the common .crow -foot, and various others
of the ranunculus family, the wild parsnip, black henbane, and the
wild poppy, are occasionally destructive.
The symptoms of poisoning by these acrid and narcotic plants are
obscure, unless they can be connected with the history of the case.
They are principally sudden swelling, with a peculiar stupor, in the