Milch Cows and Dairy Farming / Comprising the Breeds, Breeding, and Management, in Health and Disease, of Dairy and Other Stock, the Selection of Milch Cows, with a Full Explanation of Guenon's Method; The Culture of Forage Plants, and the Production of Milk, Butter, and Cheese: Embodying the Most Recent Improvements, and Adapted to Farming in the United States and British Provinces. With a Treatise upon the Dairy Husbandry of Holland; To Which Is Added Horsfall's System of Dairy Management

by Charles Louis Flint

Typhoid Fever

sometimes follows intense inflammatory action, and is considered the second stage of it. This form of fever is usually attended with diarrhœa. It is a debilitating complaint, and is sometimes followed by diseases known as black tongue, black leg, or quarter evil. The cause of typhoid fever is involved in obscurity. It may be proper to say that copious drinks of oat-meal gruel, with tincture of red pepper, a diet of bran, warmth to the body, and pure air, are great essentials in the treatment of this disease.

The barbarous practices of boring the horns, cutting the tail, and others equally absurd, should at once and forever be discarded by every farmer and dairyman. Alternate heat or coldness of the horn is only a symptom of this and other fevers, and has nothing to do with their cause. The horns are not diseased any further than a determination of blood to the head causes a sympathetic heat, while an unnatural distribution of blood, from exposure or other cause, may make them cold.

In all cases of this kind, if anything is done, it should be an effort to assist nature to regulate the animal system, by rousing the digestive organs to their natural action, by a light food, or, if necessary, a mild purgative medicine, followed by light stimulants.

The principal purgative medicines in use for neat cattle are Epsom salts, linseed-oil, and sulphur. A pound of salts will ordinarily be sufficient to purge a full-grown cow.

A slight purgative drink is often very useful for cows soon after calving, particularly if feverish, and in cases of over-feeding, when the animal will often appear dull and feverish; but when the surfeiting is attended by loss of appetite, it can generally be cured by withholding food at first, and then feeding but slightly till the system is renovated by dieting.

Purgative drinks will often cure cases of red water, if taken in season.

A purgative is often necessary for cows after being turned into a fresh and luxuriant pasture, when they are apt to become bound from over-feeding; but constipation does not so often follow a change from dry to green food in spring, as from a poor pasture in summer to one where they obtain much better feed.