STRANGLES.
—This trouble, commonly called colt distemper, affects horses, and rarely mules and donkeys. It is such an infectious disease that nearly all horses contract the disease when colts and usually remain immune to future exposures. The cause is a very small organism or germ which enters the system when a healthy colt comes in contact with a diseased one or when fed and watered in infected vessels. The seat of trouble is largely restricted to the respiratory organs, occasionally causing difficulty in breathing, owing to swelling in region of throat or to accumulations in air passages.
The symptoms start out with more or less sluggishness. The animal eats little, and does not care to take much exercise. A little watery discharge frequently appears from the eyes, and about the same time a watery discharge from the nostrils, which soon becomes thicker and more yellow in color. Usually the glands between the lower jawbones become enlarged and undergo suppuration with a rupture of them and free discharge of pus. The temperature of the animal may be slightly or very greatly increased from 103° to 105°. The pulsations may also be considerably quickened. When complications do not occur this disease usually runs its course in two weeks, leaving the animal little the worse for having passed through the affliction.
The milder forms of this disease will need little or no treatment other than careful feeding and nursing. A laxative diet, with something green, if possible, should be given. The colt should be placed in clean, airy, and comfortable quarters, but not in a draft. To hasten the suppuration of the glands a poultice of hot bran or flaxseed may be applied to that region, and as soon as softening can be detected within, puncture the gland containing abscess with a clean knife blade and allow the escape of the collection of pus. During the course of the disease the animal should not be worked and care should be taken that it be not exposed to conditions likely to produce a cold.