My recent nighttime reading has been in volume 2 of Johann Cornies’s letters (Epp 2020). On several occasions Cornies mentions feather grass and the danger that it posed to sheep. For example, in his 17 November 1837 letter to the governor of the Taurida governate, Matvey Matveyevich Muromtsyov (Muromtsev), Cornies wrote:
In this region, sheep are often very thin during the summer, even with experienced owners. I would also mention that feather grass is very abundant on the local steppes and many sheep have died from it in several places. I have heard that in the region where Fein grazes his sheep, there is a huge amount of such grass. If you therefore took over 1,000 ewes from Fein this autumn and kept them over the winter at your own risk, it could easily happen that one third of the flock, or more, could die. It is also advisable to ask Fein whether the herd he is selling is free of “Raende” [bloating]. (Epp 2020, 89)
It is possible, though doubtful, that the bloating mentioned is somehow related to the feather grass. Beyond that, there is no hint at what about feather grass poses such a danger.
The following year Cornies returns to the same issue, this time in his 4 August 1838 letter to Wilhelm Martens:
The steppes are as green as in May. However, the feather grass is abundant and we are perplexed as to how to protect our sheep from it. I am having a machine built that would supposedly operate easily and could be sold cheaply. If this were to succeed, I believe firmly that very many sheep might be saved from death. (Epp 2020, 130)
As before, we learn nothing about the specific danger that feather grass poses, only that it killed so many that Cornies was devising a machine to address the problem.
Eleven days later, on 15 August 1838, in a letter to Andrei M. Fadeev (the previous chairman of the Ekaterinoslav Bureau of the Guardianship Committee), Cornies wrote:
Feather grass is an evil that has befallen our sheep herds. It grew abundantly because of our frequent rains and grows as thickly as if it were a field of grain. I am having a machine built to cut down the feather grass and reduce its evil effects that could result in the death of thousands of sheep. Should the machine work it will be of incalculable usefulness, saving many thousands of sheep from certain death. Once tests have been done, I will report their results. (Epp 2020, 135)
The specific danger that feather grass posed still remains unexplained. We read only that it threatened thousands of sheep within the Molotschna colony and that Cornies had commissioned construction of a machine to cut it down. Nearly a year later, in another letter to Fadeev (26 June 1839), Cornies reports that his machine had not worked as had hoped:
The implement that I had built last year to destroy feather grass has not proven itself. It was supposed to cut this grass, not uproot it. However, machine maker Dyck has now made a sketch of a different machine for this purpose that may well work. (Epp 2020, 182)
Nothing more is said of feather grass in Cornies’s letters and papers during this period. Still the question remains: Why was feather grass so dangerous to sheep?
If the threat posed by feather grass was the same in the 1830s as it is today, which seems a reasonable assumption, then a recent article titled “Feather-Grass Disease of Agricultural Cattle: Diagnosis and Treatment” (Dovyd'ko 2023) may well hold the answer to our question. The article, which was published in Russian and in English (it appears that it was written in Russian and then machine-translated into English), is freely available online here.
According to the article,
The disease occurs when animals are fed with feather grass hay, when they eat feather grass stems and grains, or when they graze in the steppe zones in areas where feather grass grows. The disease is common in sheep, cattle, and horses. (quotations from Dovyd'ko 2023 have been edited for clarity in English)
Cornies mentioned sheep grazing on the open steppe, which is one of the situations described here. The article then identifies two ways that feather grass seeds can damage livestock. First, “in sheep, the seeds and leaves of the feather grass are introduced into the wool and then work their way into the skin.” The skin may become infected and cause the animal discomfort, but the condition does not appear life-threatening. More serious is the ingestion of the feather grass seeds.
During the chewing process, the caryopsis [seed] and awn [bristle-like appendage] of the feather grass migrate from the oral cavity to the region of the parotid salivary gland, supraorbital cavity, jaw joint, intermaxillary space, and other parts of the head, where they cause the formation of fistulas, purulent-necrotic [pus-filled and tissue-killing] foci, the intensity of development of which depends on the level of their infections. … The injured tissue is edematous [swollen with an excessive accumulation of fluid], a limited inflammatory process is observed, followed by the formation of nonhealing fistulas, often pus-filled centers appear in the places where the awns are introduced, which gradually merge to form abscesses. Body temperature rises by 2–3 degrees Celsius. From constant anxiety and pain, animals become gradually exhausted. … With damage to the tissues of the intermaxillary space, chewing muscles, and tongue, the body temperature rises, and the animals quickly lose weight.
How might one diagnose feather grass disease? The article explains, “The most characteristic signs of feather grass disease are difficulty chewing food, salivation, coughing, and an unpleasant odor from the oral cavity.” It also outlines how to treat the disease: hydrogen peroxide, opening of abscesses, and use of antiseptic/antiobiotic therapy.
These treatment options were not, of course, available to Cornies and the Mennonites of his day. Still, Cornies took the right approach in terms of prevention, since the article states that “the most effective means of dealing with feather grass is mowing the feather grass before it blooms.” This was precisely what Cornies intended with his machine, which “was supposed to cut this grass, not uproot it.”
Cornies apparently understood that the problem was not with feather grass per se, which could be eaten by sheep and other animals, but rather with feather grass that had ripened and whose seeds posed a serious threat to the lives of any sheep who ate them.
Works Cited
Epp, Ingrid I., trans. 2020. 1836–1842. Vol. 2 of Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Available online here.
Dovyd'ko, Oleg. 2023. “Feather-Grass Disease of Agricultural Cattle: Diagnosis and Treatment.” Pioneer Produkt website. Available online here.
No comments:
Post a Comment