Give catechu, 2 drachms at a time, two or three times daily, in mashes.
Change the food or water, whichever on examination seems most objectionable. Give no hay or grass, but plenty of linseed tea to drink; give good bruised or scalded oats, with a small quantity of warm bran mixed in each feed, and leave a lump of chalk in manger: or administer diluted phosphoric acid, one ounce to one pint lukewarm water, twice daily, till the symptoms abate, then gradually reduce the dose.[31]
A horse once found to be subject to this disease should be very carefully fed and watered.
WORMS
are indicated by a state of the coat called “hide-bound” and “staring,” with loss of condition and indisposition to work; by a slimy mucus covering the dung-balls; also occasionally by the adherence of the parasites round the anus, and thin evacuation in the fæces.
They cling so pertinaceously to the internals, that they will eat through the coat of the stomach, and are never likely to be removed by a single dose of any medicine. Spirit of turpentine is highly recommended as a cure, but if given it must be diluted largely—one part turpentine to four parts oil.
Practical experience of various remedies for worms justifies me in recommending one to two grains of arsenic and twenty grains of kamela twice daily (each dose mixed in a handful of wet bran, and given with oats or other feeding) for eighteen days, and a purge the nineteenth morning.
The horse may get moderate work during the administration of the powders.
Common salt is also considered a good remedy: about a tablespoonful daily mixed with the food.
To guard against these pests, avoid the use of Egyptian beans; but as “bots” are mostly taken in at grass by the animal licking off and swallowing their larvæ laid in the hair of the legs, it is almost impossible to exclude them. In a few cases they are bred in the internals without any accountable cause, and against this no precaution can avail.