This is usually a mere symptom of some other disease, upon the removal of which the costiveness disappears. But sometimes, in consequence of dry food, deficient action of the liver, want of exercise, or a paralytic condition of the digestive organs, it may require attention.
Treatment.—The animal should have regular exercise, green food or bran mashes night and morning, with but little oats, or other heating or dry food. Give fifteen drops of J.K., night and morning, and the condition will soon be corrected.
Bots and Worms
Bots in the horse, like worms in the human system, have usually a great many sins to answer for, which are really chargeable elsewhere. It is a principle in the economy of nature, that one animal should feed upon or live within another, and hence every animal, and almost every organ, also, has its peculiar parasite or inhabitant. Such parasites are rarely injurious. In an unhealthy condition of the system, they may unduly accumulate, and occasion some inconvenience, but they rarely feed upon the surface to which they are attached, but only upon the contents of the organs in which they exist.
The history of the bot, the most formidable of horse parasites, is as follows: Towards the close of autumn, the female gadfly (octrus equi) fixes its eggs upon the hair of the horse’s legs, by means of a sticky substance, exuded with the egg. By means of the horse’s tongue and lips, these eggs are carried to the mouth, and so on down to the stomach, where the eggs, farther developed in the form of grubs, are attached, by means of their hooks, to the sides of the organ, while their heads remain floating in its fluids, upon which they feed. Having arrived at maturity, they are separated, pass along the intestines, and are expelled with the dung, after which they again burst their shell, and rise in the summer in the form of the gadfly.
Symptoms.—Some horses are supposed to suffer much from bots, while others, in the most perfect health, have an abundance of them. Often there are no symptoms to indicate their presence, but generally, the horse loses flesh and strength, and can scarcely move about; he has turns of griping pains in the belly; eats and drinks greedily; the oats pass off undigested, and the dung has a bad smell. The only sure criterion of the existence of bots or worms is their presence, hanging about the anus, or mixed with the dung of the animal.
There are also the long round worms, similar to the common earth worm, and the small pin-norm, half an inch or more in length, which show at the anus, an inch or more in length, which often causes itching and uneasiness at the anus.
Treatment.—To eradicate worms or bots from the system, give fifteen drops of D.D., each night and morning, with regular and healthy feed, and the worm symptoms will soon disappear.
For Colic or belly-ache, when supposed to be from bots, give fifteen drops of the D.D., alternately with the A.A., every half hour or hour, according to the urgency of the case. A few doses will usually relieve.
In obstinate cases, when the Bots seem to be constitutional, give fifteen drops of the D.D., every morning, and the same of J.K., every night, and so continue until good health is established.