SHEEP DISEASES

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22506, 14 September 1938, Page 15

SHEEP DISEASES

LINCOLN COLLEGE ADVICE

SUCCESSFUL ADOPTION BY FARMERS

The director (Professor Hudson) reported at yesterday’s meeting of the Board of Governors of Canterbury Agricultural College that recently the S.I.R. and Agricultural Departments arranged for a temporary committee to make provision for investigational work on sheep mortality. Two meetings of this committee were held, the college being represented by the dire# tor, Provision was made for certain experimental work, including vaccination trials, to be carried out on lambs supplied by tne college. A permanent committee, including representatives of farming organisations, is now being set up. Referring to the report, Mr G. F. Wright said that a member of his family had 600 odd ewes in which pinkeye was very prevalent. He followed the college staff advice in the matter of treatment, and lost only one ewe. The same flockowner, in another case, had treated dopy ewes, a number of which appeared to be in a very bad way, on the college advice, and with equal success. He desired to pass this on to the officers concerned. Their advice was extremely valuable to farmers.

Professor Hudson said that there was rarely a day that the college was not rung up by sheepowners in regard to ewe and lamb troubles, and he thought a useful service was being rendered by the staff in providing advice. The Treatment The treatment referred to at the board discussion was published in extenso on the Farm Page of “The Press’’ recently, and is that recommended by Dr. M. C. Franklin and Mr D. J. Sidey. For pink-eye the treatment recommended is a solution of 2J per cent, of zinc sulphate, applied with the aid of an eye-dropper. Success is largely dependant on early detection of the symptoms. Inability to do this eventually may lead to the ewes going off their feed, and rendering them more liable to attacks of ante-partum paralysis. For ante-partum paralysis a dose of molasses and glauber salts is recommended. The symptoms of ante-par-tum paralysis are very similar to those of milk fever, but they are entirely different troubles, requiring different treatment. To-morrow morning the college staff will commence inoculating a proportion of the stud lambs with enterotoxaemia vaccine as a precaution against pulpy kidney, this work being done at the tailing. The college flocks have not been subject to pulpy kidney to anything like the extent of farmers’ flocks, but this work is being done by the college in conjunction with the Sheep Diseases Investigation Committee, and careful details of the tests of the stud sheep and the commercial flock at Ashley Dene will be kept to indicate the degree of efficacy of the treatment. Detailed results of injection treatment have not been recorded to much extent, but a very fair idea should be available from the tests to be conducted at Lincoln. Half the lambs will be inoculated and the other half kept as a control. At the Ashley Dene farm there are about 1200 lambs, and in addition to trying out the accepted vaccine, a proprietary preparation, which provides one injection instead of two, will be tested. About 400 lambs of the 1200 will be kept as a control, 300 will receive the recommended double Injection of the Australian vaccine, 300 the single proprietary preparation, and about 200 the single injection of the Australian preparation.