WHITE SCOURS OF CALVES.
—Calves of several days or weeks old suffer from indigestion, which is indicated by thriftlessness, and then scouring. The discharges are white, sour, curdled and frequent at first and then become watery, greenish and offensive, passing in stream often. Calves live some days and fast lose flesh, showing all the symptoms of ill health.
One of the commonest causes is feeding dirty, souring or decomposing factory skim milk in large quantities at long intervals; even sweet skim milk so fed may produce the trouble. To prevent scours give calves a perfectly clean, airy, sunny pen and yard attached. Separate any calf that scours. Avoid dirty, dark, damp, poorly ventilated pens in which scouring calves have been. Give all food from clean, scalded, sun-dried vessels. Feed small quantities of food often; and in milk mix lime water freely two or three times a week as a preventive; and daily when scouring has been experienced. Also see that the udders of cows nursing calves do not become contaminated with manure or other filth.
Wash udders with a two per cent solution of coal tar disinfectant before any calf is allowed to suck for the first time, and then repeat to keep the udders clean. Also disinfect the navel of each calf at birth with a 1⁄500 solution of corrosive sublimate and repeat the application twice a day until the navel is perfectly healed over. At the first sign of scours give castor oil shaken up in milk. Two to 6 tablespoonfuls is the dose according to the size and age of the calf. Follow two or three times daily with a 1 to 2-teaspoonful dose of a mixture of one part of salol and two parts of subnitrate of bismuth in milk or water. For calves scouring on skim milk mix in each pint of milk 1 teaspoonful of a mixture of half an ounce of formaldehyde in 151⁄2 ounces of distilled water, to be kept in an amber-colored bottle.