No specific remedy for the loco disease has been discovered, and in the nature of the case no such remedy is likely to be found. In the present state of knowledge concerning the subject the only rational treatment to be recommended is that of confinement and feeding with a nutritious diet. By separating the locoed sheep at once from other sheep the spreading of the habit will be prevented, and the locoed animals may be fattened and thus prevented from becoming a total loss. Although locoed animals may readily be fattened and sold for mutton, their recovery from the loco habit is apparent only, and is due to their inability to obtain the loco weed. Such animals when allowed to run upon the range again almost invariably return to their old habit of eating loco weed. Animals which have once been locoed are, therefore, unsuitable for stocking the range.
In combatting the loco disease the most rational methods include providing salt for the sheep, the immediate removal of locoed sheep from the band, confining them in a fold, and feeding them upon a nutritious diet. They may thus be fed for market, and their pernicious habit will not spread to other sheep. In the case of locoed horses, an apparent recovery takes place if they are confined in a stable and fed on ordinary cultivated forage or allowed to run in pastures where no loco weeds are found. Such horses are always somewhat dangerous, and more apt to run away or become unmanageable than horses which have not become affected with this disease.
* Crotalaria sagittalis.—The rattlebox (rattle weed; wild pea) is an annual weed which grows on sandy soil throughout most of the eastern half of the United States. In some years it is especially abundant in the bottom lands of the Missouri Valley. Horses and sometimes cattle are killed in this region by eating grass or meadow hay which is contaminated with the plant.
Fig. 93.—Rattle box (Crotalaria sagittalis). a, Whole plant; b, cross-section of seed pod—both one-third natural size.
Lupinus leucophyllus.—This herbaceous shrub is a representative of a very large genus of plants, many of which are widely and abundantly distributed throughout the western United States, and are generally known as lupines. The above species is very abundant in Montana, where it is said to have caused the death of a very large number of sheep. There is some question whether the animals are killed by a poisonous constituent of the plant or merely by tympanites. The seeds of all the lupines are probably deleterious in the raw state. In Europe, however, the seeds of Lupinus albus, after the bitter taste has been removed by steeping and boiling, are eaten by human beings as well as by cattle.
POISONING BY LUPINES (LUPINUS LEUCOPHYLLUS; L. SERICEUS; L. CYANEUS).
These plants are commonly known by the names blue pea, blue bean, and wild bean. They are coarse, silky-haired perennial herbs, with blue flowers arranged in conspicuous terminal racemes, which blossom in June and July, with long-stemmed leaves, which are divided into from seven to eleven leaflets radiating from a common point. The fruit is a hairy, several-seeded pod, and the seeds are small and somewhat flattened.
As a rule these plants do not occur in the flat river bottoms. They occur most abundantly on the foothills and mountain ranges at moderate elevations.
During the season of 1900 the lupines in Montana began to bloom about May 20th, and the first full pods were collected on June 5th. Lupines are not very extensively eaten by sheep during the spring and summer, except when they are unusually hungry or are being driven from one range to another. Lupines are more often eaten by sheep in summer on the mountain sides, and in the fall and early winter after early frosts have opened the pods and the seeds have fallen out. Lupine hay is greedily eaten by all kinds of stock during the winter, and large quantities of this hay have been fed for the past fifteen or twenty years. Lupine hay is cut in different years at dates ranging from the 1st of July to the middle of September. When cut during the first half of July the newly ripe pods, full of seeds, are secured in the hay. When, however, the harvesting of lupine hay is postponed until September, the pods become ripe and split open, and the majority of seeds fall out. A striking variation in the quantity of pods containing seeds is noted during different years. During seasons in which May and June are wet the quantity of pods is usually large. When, however, these months are dry only a few pods are found on each plant, and a vast majority of the flowers fail to be fertilised.