Hypocupraemia in dairy cows.

Although Neal, Becker & Shealy (193 I) appear to have been the first to suggest that deficiency of copper occurs naturally in livestock, it was Sjollema (1933) who first described a disease of plants and animals in parts of Holland which could be controlled by administration of copper. In cattle, goats and sheep the disease, a form of ‘Lecksucht ’, was characterized by anorexia, emaciation, anaemia and diarrhoea. The most valuable subsequent work indicating the importance of copper metabolism in ruminants was carried out in Western Australia by Bennetts & Chapman (1937) and by Bennetts & Beck (1942) who showed that enzootic ataxia of lambs, a demyelinating disease developing in the foetus during late gestation, was preventable by administration of small amounts of copper during pregnancy. The occurrence of the disease was shown to be associated with a low copper content of the pastures and a low copper status of both ewes and ataxic lambs. The same condition occurs in sheep in other parts of Australia and also in New Zealand in limited areas. The disease, swayback, in lambs is widespread in Great Britain and has been shown by Innes & Shearer (1940) to correspond pathologically to the enzootic ataxia of Australasia. It differs from the Australian condition, however, in that it is not due to a simple copper deficiency of the herbage. The copper content of affected Australian pastures is below 5 p.p.m., whereas in Great Britain the apparently identical disease is recorded on pastures of normal copper content ranging from 7 to 23 p.p.m. in the dry matter. In certain areas in Western Australia where ataxia occurs in lambs, an enzootic disease of dairy cattle, characterized by loss of condition and sudden death, has been reported by Bennetts & Hall (1939). The clinical symptoms of ‘sudden death’ or ‘falling disease’ are evident in adult cattle, especially during the flush growth of pasture in spring when, in spite of this, there is loss of condition, development of rough staring coats and often anaemia and depraved appetite. The syndrome somewhat resembles that described by Sjollema (1938) and by Brouwer, Frens, Reitsma & Kalisvaart (1938) in Holland, but diarrhoea, although sometimes present, is not a characteristic of the condition in Australia. These conditions, both in Holland and Australia, can be cured and prevented by administration of copper. A copper deficiency disease called ‘peat scours’ has been reported in cattle on peat land in New Zealand by Cunningham (1944). The most characteristic symptoms of the acute form affecting dairy cattle are loss of condition, and persistent severe diarrhoea which occurs whenever there is a flush growth of pasture; symptoms in beef cattle