ULCERATIVE STOMATITIS IN LAMBS AND KIDS.
Causes: Accessory, locality, youth, debility, unsuitable food, impure air, parasitism, contagion. Bacteria. Symptoms: difficult sucking, frothing, salivation, buccal redness and swelling, white, softened patches, suppuration, granulation, fœtor, emaciation, debility, bowel symptoms, respiratory. Duration. Treatment: Artificial feeding, antisepsis, disinfection, mild caustics, etc.
Causes. This has been noticed as an enzootic affection in young and debilitated animals, while the mature and more robust ones escape. Anæmic lambs, those that are fed on watery, innutritious materials (potatoes, grains, waste of sugar factories), those kept in close confinement, indoors, and those that suffer from distomatosis show the disease. Impure air, damp, dark places and impure water have their influence. The disease is manifestly contagious, but the infecting microbe has not been demonstrated. It was formerly supposed to be the oidium albicans, the fungus of muguet, but Neumann demonstrated its absence, and though he found leptothrix buccalis, bacilli, spirochcæte and micrococci he failed to show that any one of these in pure culture would cause the disease. Rivolta charged it on bacterium subtile agnorum and Berdt on the polydesmus exitiosus which according to him the sheep contract from eating rape cake. The withdrawal of the cake led to a rapid recovery.
Symptoms. The disease may begin insidiously without at first very marked symptoms. Sucking is painful and infrequent, an acid froth collects about the mouth, and white patches appear on the gums or other part of the buccal mucosa, with at times redness and swelling, and the separation of the gums from the teeth. The white epithelial patches soften and are easily detached, leaving bright red patches, which bleed easily, and tend to extension and coalescence. These are covered by a viscid mucopurulent matter, and may become the seat of granulations, or they may involve the subjacent tissues in ulceration causing evulsion of the teeth, or necrosis of the jaw bone. The odor of the mouth is fœtid. Prostration and emaciation set in, and often bear a ratio to the extension of the disease to the digestive and respiratory organs. This is manifested by uneasy movements of the hind feet, shaking of the tail, frequent lying down and rising, constipation or diarrhœa: or by cough, snuffling breathing, swelling of the submaxillary and pharyngeal glands, and hurried, oppressed breathing. The complication of vesicular and pustular eruption has been noticed. Death may occur in eight or ten days, or more commonly recovery ensues.
Treatment must proceed on the same lines as in the calf. Artificial feeding on gruels, with antiseptic washes for the mouth at each meal are indicated. Chlorate of potash, chloride of lime, borax, sulphites and hyposulphites of soda, carbolic acid, and the salts of iron afford an ample field for selection. For ulcers, a pointed stick of nitrate of silver, or a solution of muriatic acid in three times its volume of water, applied by means of a glass rod or pledget of cotton will serve a good purpose.