BRAN DISEASE: SHORTS DISEASE: BRAN RACHITIS.
Miller’s horses. Bran and middlings as fodder. Torpid bowels, impaction, indigestion, colic, early fatigue and perspiration, stiffness, lameness, epiphyseal swelling, facial bones swell and soften symmetrically, teeth drop, dyspnœa. Ash of bran. Treatment.
A curious form of rickets has been observed, especially in miller’s horses as a result of an excessive consumption of bran or middlings. It is characterized by torpor of the bowels, impaction, indigestions, slight colics, early fatigue and profuse perspiration under slight exertion followed by stiffness, lameness, enlargement of the bones in the region of the epiphyseal cartilage (near knee or hock), or of the bones of the face. The superior and inferior maxillary bones are symmetrically enlarged, the teeth are shed, mastication becomes difficult and there may be some dyspnœa and snuffling. This resembles the “snuffles” in pigs on an exclusive diet of Indian corn or potato and Friedberger and Fröhner seek to explain both, by the lack of lime and phosphorus in the food. But wheat bran has 5.1 per cent. of ash, and middlings 2.3 per cent. as compared with wheat flour 1.7 per cent. or oats 2.7 per cent. Putz on the contrary attributes the disease to the excess of phosphorus in the bran acting as the free phosphorus in lucifer match factories in causing necrosis of the jaw. But the phosphorus in bran occurs as phosphate of lime which has no such action on the bone and one must infer that the phosphoric acid is set free by some acid developed perhaps in the intestinal fermentations. This is, however, as yet unproved.
The treatment of this affection consists in the suspension of the bran and the expulsion of offensive accumulations and products from the bowels, followed by a course of tonics and the general treatment for rickets.