AN ABNORMAL CALVING CASE
251
enlarged mammary glands running along .the under surface of th e a bdomen in the depths of the swelling. Every thing seemed to be outside the abdominal cavity. The t abby was chloroformed in the afternoon of April 11th, the swelling was painted with tincture of iodine and incised along its entire length , and a good half pint of yellowish serous fluid evacuated ; two ounces of glandular tissue was taken away from the abdominal wall and this m ade quite clean and level. There was no great amount of h
An Abnormal Calving Case. By ABRAHAM SCOTSON, M.R.C.V.S., M arket Rasen. SUBJ ECT.- Lincoln red heifer. Sunday, 25th, 10 a. m ., telephone call to a heifer calving. On arrival I found the heifer quite normal and eating hay ; no signs of any flow of milk or relaxation of the pelvis, and had it not been for two or three inch es of dark and shrivelled placenta hanging from the v ulna, I should not have handled her. H aving fast ened the animal securely and dressed my hand with a little belladonna ointment, I found tha t it was only possible to introduce three fingers into the vagina ; but by manipulation I at last succeeded in p assing my whole h and, which came in contact with what I a t first thought was a tumour. As I could feel no attachment, I took a firm grip and was surprised to find a com pletely formed calf which was mummified and only about one-tenth the normal size. On further explora tion I found the uterus intact with every symptom of there being another calf within.
252
THE VETERINARY JOURNAL
The calf taken away was about 6 in. long, the head b eing almost the shape of a duck's head with bill attached. It weighed only about 10 oun ces. The owner told me that the heifer had been served by the male twice at an interval of six weeks, and her time was up to calve from the first service on the following week (about April 6th). Query : How long had the calf been outside the uterus?
Jibstracts Report on the City of Luxemburg Slaughter .. House for 1926. * AN excellently edited report for 1926 on the Sanitary Service of the Public Slaughter-House for the City of Luxemburg h as been produced by its Director, Dr. Spartz, Veterinary Surgeon t o the t own. This repor t is purely statistical, comprising 40 pages of figures and tables, and although the compiler has refrained from criticism , the following interesting conclusions have b een drawn therefrom . The post-war period has shown a rem arkable increase in the volume of work dealt with : from 1919 t o 1926 this increased 1,123 · 5 metric tons live weight, or 76 · 45 per cent. There were considerable imports of animals from Belgium, and exports of fattened pigs t o the Sarre. Tuberculosis is the most striking of the diseases m entioned ; 749· adult bovines out of 2,298 slaughtered were found tuberculous, i.e. 32 · 5 per cent. ; 59 calves out of 8,190, i.e. 0·72 per cent ., and HlO pigs out of 9,374, i.e. 1· 70 per cent. Cows were far more often affected than bulls or oxen, and the majority were of Dutch stock , but since no figures are given as to the total number slaughtered from each stock it is impossible t o say which stock is m ost affected. The period 1917-1925 h as shown an increase of tuberculosis, which is particularly noticeable in the case of the calves; whereas in 1905· only 0 ·04 per cent. of the total number slaughtered were r egistered as tuberculous, in 1925 this had reached 0 · 85 per cent. , 21 times as much. Eighteen cows were found to be suffering from variou s tumours-fibroma, cancer, etc. Only 19 carcasses were seized in entirety, of which five were tuberculous; but 85 carcasses or quarters were put up for sale as * R eviewed in the Bulletin de l'Acadt!m.i e Vett!rinair e de Fran ce , March 1928, P· 8 1.