Causes: early life, exclusive activity of fourth stomach, faulty milk, absence of colostrum, milk from advanced lactation, milk of other genus, or altered by excitement, or unwholesome food, excess on hungry stomach, soured, fermented, feverish milk, putrid milk, leucomaines, overdistension of stomach, farinaceous food, hair balls, morning and evening milk, milk after first calf, composition of milk by genus, ruminant’s milk to monogastric animal, infectious microbes—bacilli, micrococci. Symptoms: costiveness, inappetence, listlessness, tense abdomen, acid eructations, fœtid diarrhœa, becoming yellow or white, general fœtor, staring coat, pallid mucosæ, tucked up tender abdomen, weakness, emaciation, fever, bloating, frothy dejections, arthritis, peritonitis, pneumonitis, hepatitis, ophthalmia, laminitis, etc. Mortality: in foals, calves, lambs. Lesions: gastric and intestinal congestions, exudations, necrosis, incoagulable blood in foals, anæmia. Prevention: normal feeding, expulsion of meconium, care of nurse, adapt composition of cow’s milk to genus of nursling, warmth, lime water, rubber teat, Pasteurizing, disinfection, separation from infected animals and places, breed from robust parents. Treatment: elimination, antiseptics, boiling milk, rennet, ipecacuan, carminatives, astringents, tar, calomel and chalk, gum, flaxseed, elm bark.
Causes. The abomasum in the adult is protected against disorder, by the normal activity of the first three stomachs, macerating the food, presiding over the second and more perfect mastication, grinding it between the omasal folds into a firmly attenuated pulp and delaying its progress so that it arrives at the fourth stomach at short intervals and in small quantities only at a time. It follows that this organ is rarely involved in serious disorder unless as the result of the ingestion of poisons, or of excess of water, or from the presence of parasites. In the very young ruminant, however, the condition is reversed, the first three stomachs are as yet undeveloped, and incapable of receiving more than the smallest quantity of food or of retaining the same, and the abomasum alone is functionally active and receives at once practically everything that may be swallowed. In the first few weeks of life therefore the ruminant is exposed to almost the same dangers, from overloading, indigestion, inflammation and poisoning as is the monogastric animal. For the time, indeed, the undeveloped ruminant is in its physiological and pathological relations, a monogastric animal. For this early life therefore whatever applies to the soliped applies equally well to the ruminant.
When allowed to suck at will from a healthy nurse, which completed its gestation about the time the young animal was born, indigestion is rare. But whatever interferes with the normal supply is liable to cause derangement. The withholding of the first milk—colostrum—the laxative properties of which are essential to clear away the intestinal accumulations of fœtal life—meconium; the placing of new-born offspring on the milk of nurses that bore their young many months before; bringing up of foals on cow’s milk; working, overdriving, hunting, shipping by rail, or otherwise exciting the dams; allowing too long intervals between the meals—feeding morning and night only, or morning, noon and night, the nurse being kept at work or pasture in the interval; feeding unwholesome food to the nurse; bringing up by hand, on cold and even soured milk, or that which has become contaminated by putrid leavings in the unscalded buckets. Some of these causes should be emphasized, for example the milk of excitement and fever, milk that is soured or putrid, and milk suddenly swallowed in excess. The nurse which is fevered or subjected to over-exertion has produced an excess of tissue waste and leucomaines which largely escape from the system in the milk. This milk is therefore at times unwholesome and even poisonous. Mares subjected to severe work or that fret much under lighter work, cows carried by car or boat, or driven violently, and any nursing animal which has been thrown into a fever from any cause whatever, is liable to yield toxic milk. This would include the milk of all severe diseases, as being liable to become charged with toxins and ptomaines and thus poison the young animal, which subsists upon it as an exclusive diet, even though the actual pathogenic microbe may not be present in the secretion.
With regard to fermented milk, that which has been simply soured, relaxes the bowels and the attendant congestion contributes to further derangement and even infection by any pathogenic germ which may be present, or by microbes which are habitually saprophytic, but take occasion to dangerously attack the weakened mucosa. If the milk has undergone putrefaction in the feeding bucket, the co-existence of the septic germ and the septic ptomaines and toxins, often determines indigestion and irritation of the mucosa. These poisons may further be absorbed and produce general constitutional disorder which reacts most injuriously on the stomach and digestion.
Milk swallowed rapidly and in excess by a hungry calf or foal, overdistends the stomach, which, like other hollow viscera in such conditions, is rendered paretic or paralytic, and suffers from suspension of both the vermicular contractions and the peptic secretions. Under these conditions the milk, which is one of the most admirable culture media for bacterial ferments, undergoes rapid decomposition, with the production of a series of toxins and ptomaines varying according to the different kinds of microbes that may be present. Under such conditions microbes which are normally harmless, vigorously and destructively attack the mucous membrane and determine some of the worst types of juvenile diarrhœa.
In artificial feeding there is another serious danger. Calves in particular are brought up largely on gruels made from farinaceous material. These contain a large quantity of starch which requires the action of the saliva (ptyaline) to resolve it into glucose, and fit it for absorption. But in the early days of life the salivary glands are almost entirely inactive, and it is only as the first three stomachs develop that this secretion becomes normally abundant. This is sought to be met by fixing in the feeding bucket a rubber teat, which the young animal is made to suck so as to solicit the secretion of saliva. The benefit obtained is however more from the slower ingestion of the milk than from any material increase of saliva from the as yet functionally inactive glands.
The presence of hair balls in the stomach, derived from the skin of themselves or others is one of the most injurious of the causes of juvenile indigestion. Lying as these do at this early age in the one well developed stomach they interfere with its normal secretions, and being at first open in texture they become saturated with putrefying ingesta, which gives out the most poisonous products.
The milk is materially affected by the food eaten by the nursing animal and such variations in the milk tend at times to derange a weak stomach. The following table from Becquerel and Vernois gives the results of dry and succulent food on the amount of the different proximate principles in the milk.
| Nature of Food. | Water. Parts in 1,000. | Casein and extractive matter. Parts in 1,000. | Milk, Sugar. Parts in 1,000. | Butter. Parts in 1,000. | Salts. Parts in 1,000. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cows on winter feed: | ||||||
| Trefoil or lucerne 12–13 lbs.; oat straw, 9–10 lbs.; beets, 7 lbs.; water, 2 buckets | 871.26 | 47.81 | 33.47 | 42.07 | 5.34 | |
| Cows on summer feed: | ||||||
| Green trefoil, lucerne, maize, barley, grass and 2 buckets water | 859.56 | 54.7 | 36.38 | 42.76 | 6.30 | |
| Goats milk on different rations: | ||||||
| Straw and trefoil | 858.68 | 47.38 | 35.47 | 52.54 | 5.92 | |
| Beets | 888.77 | 33.81 | 38.02 | 33.68 | 5.72 | |
The decrease of the solids but especially of the casein, sugar, and salts is very marked in the cow on poor winter feeding. In the goat fed on beets alone the increase of sugar and decrease of other solids is striking.