PLEURISY IN SHEEP.
Causes, exposure, after clipping, washing in cold weather, alternations from hot buildings to cold fields, shedding of the wool. Symptoms, hyperthermia, troubled breathing and pulse with catching inspiration, tender intercostals, friction sound, and signs of effusion. Treatment, preventive, shelter, febrifuges in food or water, aqua ammonia to sides.
The causes of pleurisy in sheep may be largely included in the general statement—exposure. Cold washing and exposure after clipping is especially injurious. Devieusart saw 300 cases of pleurisy and thirty deaths in a flock of sheep shorn in February. If kept secluded in warm buildings sheep may be shorn in midwinter, but any reckless exposure, and any sudden reduction of the temperature of the building is liable to be disastrous. Scab and other skin affections which lead to a shedding of the wool in inclement weather may also be the occasion of widespread attacks. Otherwise the causes are essentially those of the same disease in the larger animals.
The symptoms resemble those of pneumonia, but with the peculiar sharp, short arrest of the inspiration, and the marked tenderness of the intercostal spaces as above described. The cough is short, dry, hacking and infrequent or suppressed as much as possible. Auscultation and percussion signs, corresponding to those found in other animals, are easily got in the newly shorn sheep. In the unshorn the wool must be parted and a stethoscope employed.
The treatment is mainly preventive, or when the disease is present, of a general nature applicable to flocks. A warm barn, with pure air, blanketing, wet compresses, to which may be added extract of henbane, and nitrate of potash in the drinking water give examples of general medication. As a derivative, aqua ammonia and oil may be applied in lines on the chest exposed by parting the wool or generally on the shorn. Where the patient can receive the requisite attention further treatment should be on lines laid down for cattle.