ACUTE CONGESTION OF THE KIDNEYS IN SHEEP AND GOAT.
Causes: irritant food. Lesions: Symptoms: separates from its fellows, arched back, stiff straddling gait, straining, muscular weakness, recumbency, urine red, with blood globules and albumen. Prevention: care in feeding and watering, change of pasture and treatment as in the ox.
Causes. As in cattle, the smaller ruminants appear to suffer especially from an alimentary renal congestion, showing itself mainly in animals that are unaccustomed to the particular toxic aliment. Thus, Cornevin finds that the Pyrennean sheep thrives on the leaves of the Quercus tosa, while Southdown sheep taking it in any considerable quantity perish of renal congestion or nephritis. Similarly Weith fed four sheep on cynanchum vincetoxicum and developed renal congestion in the course of three days. Other causes doubtless contribute in individual cases but have not been specially traced to their effects.
Lesions are in the main the same as in cattle, the kidneys being bluish red, soft, flaccid and friable.
Symptoms. The sheep lags behind the flock, frequently lies down and rises, strains to urinate, and passes often considerable quantities. The back is arched, the loins tender, the walk stiff and straddling, the pulse small and weak. If the disease advances, there come on extreme muscular weakness, a disposition to lie, an uncertain, gait, with frequent stumbling, dullness, stupor, and it may be coma. The urine is usually tinged with blood or of a deep red or black, and contains well-formed blood globules and more or less albumen.
Prevention and treatment should proceed on the same lines as in the ox, but in dealing with a large herd it becomes difficult to treat each separate case with special care. The avoidance of sudden change of food as in turning out in spring, the feeding of grain before turning out, the return to the fold after a short freedom, and the gradual transition to the new food are important. When the disease has developed, an entire change of pasture or food, the use of roots, ensilage, or grain, or of freshly cut meadow grass, is indicated, and an oleaginous laxative (castor oil 2 to 3 ozs.) are indicated. Oilcake or flaxseed meal will often prove a most valuable article. Beyond this the same agents would be indicated as for the ox.
ACUTE CONGESTION OF THE KIDNEYS IN SWINE.
Causes: infection, toxins, fermented food, traumas, crowding, cold. Symptoms: stiff loins and quarters, frequent micturition, urine limpid or red. Treatment.
Renal congestion in pigs has been seen mainly as the result of toxin poisoning in swine erysipelas, hog cholera or caseous pneumonia. It is also liable to occur from putrid or overfermented food, and in fat, heavy animals from injuries sustained in shipping by rail by trampling on or squeezing each other. Kicks and other injuries may at times contribute to its occurrence. Exposure to cold storms, to which swine are especially sensitive, a wet, cold bed, or a leaky roof, are additional causes.
The symptoms are more or less stiffness of the loins and hind parts, frequent urination, the secretion being often passed in excess, and though at times clear yet at others pink or bloody and precipitating blood clots or at least containing blood globules.