CHRONIC ANÆMIA. DROPSY IN CATTLE AND SHEEP.
Definition. Causes, parasitic and microbian. Symptoms. Treatment.
Definition. A progressive anæmia in ruminants and other animals, resulting in general anasarca, and dropsies of the internal cavities.
In veterinary works published on the European Continent this affection is given a special place apart from the same train of symptoms which mark distomatosis, taeniasis, and strongyliasis. The disease is described as prevailing in wet years, after inundations, when the vegetation is rank and aqueous, and of course largely aquatic, in animals that are turned out in early morning before the dew has evaporated, in the conditions, in other words, that favor the ingestion of parasites. It prevails also in work oxen fed on the refuse of sugar factories (beets, turnips) in which the nitrogenous materials are held to be deficient, but in Great Britain where cattle are often fattened on an exclusive diet of turnips, containing even a larger proportion of water, this non-parasitic disease is unknown. It is also ascribed to close, ill-ventilated, unwholesome buildings, and to over-kept and tainted fodder, and so far as a separate disease exists, it seems more reasonable to charge it to the toxins produced by bacterial ferments or cryptogams than to causes which elsewhere appear to be inoperative.
The symptoms are essentially those of distomatosis, and the treatment, apart from the parasiticides, is the same. When helminthiasis can be certainly excluded prevention would include the avoidance of the factory refuse, especially when in a state of decay.