In subacute cases the lesions are confined to the buccal mucosa, as curdy white, raised concretions with ulcerous surfaces, frothy lips and refusal of the teat, but without marked hyperthermia or constitutional disturbance. Contagion is little marked, the disease appearing enzoötically in flocks, or even as but one case in each of several flocks.
Mortality. Eight per cent. of acute cases may perish, but the subacute nearly all recover.
Prevention. When the disease has appeared in a flock, or in its vicinity, the mouths of the lambs should be examined daily and affected subjects and their dams carefully separated. A thorough disinfection of the fold is imperative.
Treatment. Use antiseptics on the mouth, selecting the non-poisonous articles. Borax may be rubbed freely on the patches. Solutions of sulphite, bisulphite or hyposulphite of soda (1 oz. to 1 qt.) may be used at frequent intervals on the mouth; chlorate of potash (5:100), sodium salicylate (1:100), iron chloride (1:100) may be used. Ulcerous patches may be cauterized by iron sulphate, silver nitrate, or the potential cautery. Besnoit advises mercuric chloride (1:1,000) for cutaneous lesions, but this would be unsuitable for either mouth or lips. The strength must be sustained by the dam’s milk given through a tube or syringe. For gastric lesions the sulphites may be given.
CONTAGIOUS ABORTION.
Definition: Premature expulsion of non-viable fœtus. Synonyms. Susceptible animals: cows, goats, sows, mares. Accessory causes: Ice cold drinks at periods of ovulation, frozen aliments, ice cold bath or rain storm, mechanical injuries, unwholesome fermentescible food, indigestible foods, close stabling, heavy milking, early breeding, inbreeding, stagnant water, ergot, smut, vegetable irritants or ecbolics, constitutional diseases, irritation of generative organs, death of fœtus, urinary calculi, odor of carcass or carrion, contagion, experimental infection between cows, between mare and cow, relation to omphalitis. Nocard’s streptococci and bacilli, Bang’s bacillus with best growth in two distinct grades of oxygenation, Galtier’s observations, bacterium of the Colon group in America, infection of the calves (pneumonia). Various kinds of infectious abortion. Acquired immunity, variable in different forms. Immunized cow still infecting. Symptoms. Lesions. Abortion in mares. Therapeutics. Prevention: Protection of a sound herd, guarantee with purchase, government control, precautions with male or unimpregnated female, with pregnant. Extinction in a herd, separation, disinfection, disposal of abortion, manure, urine, disinfection of animal, of genital organs, precautions as to service, new born, fields, ewes. Disinfectants, subcutem or in muscles.
Definition. The premature expulsion of the product of conception before it is viable out of the womb. Strictly speaking, a parturition in which the offspring is so far matured as to be viable is a premature parturition, while if it is non-viable it is an abortion. Vulgarly, however, as applied to herds, the term is used for any early parting with the fœtus. In this wider sense infectious abortion is the premature expulsion of the fœtus owing to an infectious catarrh of the womb, transmitted from one animal to another by the transference of the microbe.
Synonyms. Infectious Abortion, Enzoötic Abortion, Epizoötic Abortion.
Animals Affected. Abortion is most common in cows, and less frequent in ewes, goats, sows and mares.
Forms and Accessory Causes of Abortion. It was formerly supposed that abortion in herds was mainly due to mechanical and chemical agencies acting injuriously on the system, and in adopting the explanation of a particulate, transferrable, infectious agent for the habitual widespread forms of the disease, we should not forget these accessory causes, many of which by themselves cause sporadic abortions without the intervention of an infectious element.