LUNG WORM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 2106, 7 January 1886, Page 3

LUNG WORM.

The following recently appeared in the Rangitikei Advocate : — A shmt tune since we mentioned that Mr Robert Wilson, of Heaton Park, had found blue-giim a sine specific for the cure of that dwxstious disease in young sheep — lung-worm. We are now, by Mr Wilson's courtesy, enabled to publish a copy of a letter sent by him in reply to an enquiry from Mr J. G. Wilson, M.H.R., Riving fuller particulars on the subject. It will doubtle^ prove \eiy interesting to many of our reader*. The letter is as follows :—: — " Dear Sir,— Tn reply to your enquiry of the 19th October, I may state the following are particulars of the cure made in my hoggets troubled with lung worm :— Last March I purchased 9000 hoggets at auction. After I had had them a few weeks they became very bad with a cough, indicating the presence of lung-worm ; in fact, I thought I should lose the greater portion of them as it was not convenient at the time to treat them for it. I instructed my shepherd to put them in a paddock where they had aooess to a blue<gwn plantation, about 16 acres in extent, the trees being about two feet high. About ten days after they were brought into the yards for treatment, when, muoh to my surpiisa and delight, I found the cough almost entirely gone, there not being more than two or three troubled with it and not very bad. I was amazed at the change and I did not know how to account for it until a few days after I went to see whether the gut»-< had been damaged, and found all tho leaves eatca off. On my Green Bank farm, where the experiment was tried, I have n<>t 10->t a single hogget from lung-worm, and I believe a decoction made from leaves 'of the blue-gum would prove a certain cure for it. J\ s,hort time ago there y, as n \ ury interesting letter in the Otago Witness, written by ' Shepherd' and which you may not have seen ; he said somewhat in these words—' That it was useless to dose sheep with the usual treatment for lung worm, as an acid or oleoresinous dose which would quickly Hill a sheep, would not effect the lung worm,' 4 Shepherd' recommended keeping up the constitution of tho animal by feeding liber' ally with turnips and rape, as the best remedy for Uingwoym. The latter has been my experience, but It ii not always convenient to grow the above food, and besides these crops often fail, whereas should the blue-gum treatment prove effectual, it ft within Wio rcrah tfj everyoao«"