The morning call., 1895-02-06
ON WESTERN RANCHES
Flax as a Profitable Crop in
California.
THE GRAIN PLANT LOUISE.
Some Of the Causes and Prevention of
Blind Staggers.
NEW POINTS ON FEEDING POULTRY.
Business Advantages in Having a Name
for Your Farm-Ideas About
Horticulture.
NEW POINTS ON FEEDING POULTRY.

Blind staggers is easily prevented, an
very hard to cure when the prominent
symptoms appear. Its cause is long-stand-
ing indigestion, showing to a watchful
farmer in hard and dark-colored faces,
with dizziness of coat and tenderness in the
region of the kidneys and irregular and
difficult urination. Overwork followed
with heavy ration of grain and hay will
commence chronic case, so will want of
exercise each day during slack spell, us
the present time of year, so will the stop
page of the grain ration and substitution
of hay or long feed from mistaken attempts
at economy. The grain may and should
be lessened when horses are nearly idle,
but never discontinued, as the easiest and
most sure way to commence disorder of
digestion is dust in food, dusty oats and
especially mill feed, also dusty hay, and
more than all moldy chop or hay or straw.
Fern hay is charged with producing
staggers, and where grass is cut too ripe
and the fern is dusty with the pollen this
may be the case, but, personally, I always
have ferny hay, and by cutting early, as is
the best plan, have hitherto avoided
single case of staggers among my horses.
am more impressed with the idea that
dust in food is prime cause of staggers,
L
dry fall and roads are dusty, also summer
fallows, the disease is frequent during the
winter. | judge from this that the dust de-
ranges kidney action, as we'll as produces
the beginning of the chronic disorder of
the stomach, terminating long after it may
be in staggers. When the disease cu1-
inmates and threatens life, which is the
appears, 1T is then near the fatal ending,
and only very prompt and close attention
will save the horse. Do not think this stage
is the beginning of staggers, for, on the con-
trary, it is close at the end Of the life of the
horse, unless promptly met. l will name
measures that have taken to doctor a sick
horse which have sometimes been success
full, but not often enough to blow about.
First-Wlth a veterinary syringe thor
oughly empty the lower bowel. Second
Give a dose of aloes. Third-Feed only
faxseed tea for two days, given with horn
or bottle. Fourth-At intervals of two
hours give ten-drop doses of tincture of
nux vomica for the first day of treatment
and afterward the same dose at intervals
of six hours until convalescence is estab-
lished. Fifth-Food when taken should
be scalded bran, and later scalded oats
with fiaxseed mixed therein. Sixth-Long
feed is poison for two weeks or so and must
then be stinted. Thus you may save YOUR
horse, but when the sweat breaks out and
smells OF urine 1t is all up with the animal.
Mad staggers is only an extension and
complication of the complaint and shows
that the disease has affected the nervous
centers, and it is rarely cured. The old
school plan was to bleed; but you may as
well let him die as to kill him, already en-
feebled, by removing the life in the blood.
Blood infusion would be more likely to aid
recovery, but am not aware that this has
been tried in veterinary practice.
The nux vomica dose should be kept up
for month or even more after the attack
is apparently cured, as the digestion is still
weak. Ny regular practice has been and
now is to endeavor to avoid staggers,
rather than to have them to fight On
each Saturday night, after access to green
grass is shut out by frost or snow, feed
ration of ten pounds of bran and one hand
full of fiaxseed, scalt for four horses at
least, also each month or two a teaspoon
full of sulphate of iron (green coperas)
powdered, laid on the tongue, and each
two weeks during the winter throw in the
feed box half pint of oak ashes mixed
with half pint of SALT and feed on top of
it. The horse gets little daily in this
way. Of course all these precautions may
fail with me in the future, but up TO now
| have not had any advanced stage of the
disease in my stable.-FRANK BUTLER, in
Dallas (Ore.) Itemizer.