Leaflets. Nos. 101 to 200 / Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.

  • Great Britain. Board of Agriculture and Fisheries.
Date:
1919
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Leaflets. Nos. 101 to 200 / Board of Agriculture and Fisheries. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    BOARD OF AGRICULTURE AND FISHERIES. Sturdy or Gid in Sheep. The disease, known commonly under the names of sturdy, gid, turn-sick, &c., is caused by a cyst, or little bladder, called ““ Coenurus cerebralis,” which develops in the nerve centres and more particularly in the brain. The animals which most frequently suffer from it are lambs and shearlings; it is rarer in sheep over two years of age. The disease occurs occasionally in goats, oxen, and other ruminating animals. It is very rarely found in horses. The disease is, however, spread by other animals than these. The tapeworm, which lives in the small intestine of a dog, and is by no means uncommon in sheep dogs and sporting dogs, is the real source of infection. © The tapeworm is made up of a square-shaped head, with a long thin neck anda number of segments. These segments | contain eggs, and when ripe they drop off. They are easily seen with the naked eye, being about half an inch long and one-fifth of an inch wide. They may go on increasing in number till the tapeworm is quite forty inches long. They fall off as they become ripe, and are passed through the bowel of the dog to the ground, and it may be on to the pastures where the sheep are feeding. They then decay, and the rain washes the eggs over the grass or into ditches or pools from which animals drink. These eggs die if they cannot get moisture. It is known that a fortnight’s exposure in warm dry air will destroy them entirely, whereas even after three months’ exposure on damp grass the eggs remain alive, and lambs pastured thereon have caught the disease by browsing the infected grass. This is one reason why sturdy or gid is more -common in flocks which feed on damp pastures, especially when the spring and summer have been rainy, but it should be understood that moisture only acts by favouring the reservation of the eggs. If swallowed by a sheep the eggs hatch out embryos with six hooks, which bore their way through the wall of the stomach or intestinesand enter a blood vessel. They are eventually carried in the blood to the brain, spinal cord, and other parts of the body, but they only develop into fully- formed cysts or bladders in the two former. This cyst