ABORTION.
This is by no means of so common occurrence in the case of the sow as in many other of the domesticated animals. Various causes tend to produce it: insufficiency of food, eating too much succulent vegetable food, or unwholesome, unsubstantial diet; blows and falls; and the animal’s habit of rubbing itself against hard bodies, for the purpose of allaying the irritation produced by the vermin or cutaneous eruptions to which it is subject. Reiterated copulation does not appear to produce abortion in the sow; at least to the extent it does in other animals.
The symptoms indicative of approaching abortion are similar to those of parturition, but more intense. There are, generally, restlessness, irritation, and shivering; and the cries of the animal evince the presence of severe labor-pains. Sometimes the rectum, vagina, or uterus, becomes relaxed, and one or the other protrudes, and often becomes inverted at the moment of the expulsion of the fœtus, preceded by the placenta, which presents itself foremost.
Nothing can be done, at the last hour, to prevent abortion; but, from the first, every predisposing cause should be removed. The treatment will depend upon circumstances. Where the animal is young, vigorous, and in high condition, bleeding will be beneficial—not a copious blood-letting, but small quantities taken at different times; purgatives may also be administered. If, when abortion has taken place, the whole of the litter was not born, emollient injections may be resorted to with considerable benefit; otherwise, the after treatment should be made the same as in parturition, and the animal should be kept warm, quiet, and clean, and allowed a certain degree of liberty. Whenever one sow has aborted, the causes likely to have produced this accident should be sought, and an endeavor made, by removing them, to secure the rest of the inmates of the piggery from a similar mishap.
In cases of abortion, the fœtus is seldom born alive, and often has been dead for some days; where this is the case—which may be readily detected by a peculiarly unpleasant putrid exhalation, and the discharge of a fetid liquid from the vagina—the parts should be washed with a diluted solution of chloride of lime, in the proportion of one part of chloride to three parts of water, and a portion of this lotion gently injected into the uterus, if the animal will submit to it. Mild doses of Epsom salts, tincture of gentian, and Jamaica ginger, will also act beneficially in such cases, and, with attention to diet, soon restores the animal.